The Behavioural Approach and Environmental Determinism - Essay Example

144456 Single parenting, psychological distress and sociological difficulties are not only plaguing advanced societies, but also are permeating into not-so-advanced societies, compelling governments and institutions to take notice. Present case study is discussed here in terms of psychological theories like Behavioural approach and Environmental determinism and sociological theories like Attachment Theory and Strain Theory. No doubt single parenting is laying a stress on psychological wellbeing of children, with negative sociological perspectives in their future lives; nevertheless, it is a fact that society has to accept single parenting, because in future, with present stress on individuality, more and more children are likely to be brought up by single parents. Parents who find themselves abandoned by partners are supported by social care and children, who will learn to react to the circumstances and environments, will find difficulties in dealing with social and psychological problems. According to the case study, Michael and Kate were having problems during her third pregnancy because of Michael’s attitude towards his family. He has taken to drinking and was physically assaulting Kate, to the extent that she had to live with Social Care. Michael, in spite of recent behaviour, continues to be fond of their children, visits them often, buys presents, but does not want to shoulder day-today responsibilities bringing them up. Kate, being pregnant and financially dependent on Michael, was finding the situation difficult. Michael moved out of the family home and Kate moved into Grimesbar from Social Care, as it was easy to find accommodation in Grimesbar. She now lives in a four storey tenement with common entrance that is not particularly secure, and the building is scheduled for demolition. That being the case, many of the flats are empty, and Kate lives in an insecure and isolated building. Kate, being a non-practising Roman Catholic, considers other Church going single mothers as ‘holy.’ She does not particularly keep in touch with social workers and in the meantime, becomes friendly with local community activist Frances Kane, who helps Kate in looking after children. She has two teenage children of her own, a daughter training for a career and the boy in armed forces. Her husband Bill, a Lorry driver, stays away from home a lot due to his work schedule. Frances likes to look after Jade and Scott, and Kate leaves them more and more in her care, because Kate has started working and finds it almost impossible to keep a balance between work, children and home. Frances, though very understanding towards Kate’s problems and predicament, resents that Kate does not keep up with the time schedule, and collects children much later than the agreed time. Children were getting closer to Frances and moving away from Kate, who is neither patient nor present. When she was confronted by Frances, who feels that Kate should take her responsibilities seriously, the harassed and depressed Kate jumps into the conclusion that Frances should adopt her children. It is also possible that children might look for parent-figures elsewhere. Socially, children might find it difficult to cope without effectual parent guidance, due to having one parent, who is also the breadwinner of the family and hence, will hardly have any time for the individual needs of children. According to Attachment Theory of Bowlby, children separated from parents have a developmental impact of emotional adversity in childhood and even later they had mental health problems connected to their earlier losses, because children form a strong bond with their caregivers, especially parents. “Attachment theory, then, is a theory of personality development. It is a theory that demands great interest be taken in the interaction between the growing child and his or her social environment, between infants and their caregivers, between children and their families and between individuals and other people,” Howe et al (1999, p.14). As Kate’s children are very small, they see their parents in any caregiver and hence, they are getting more attached to Frances as they look at her as their own mother. They seem to have started their life with tabula rasa, a blank slate, and the slate is being written with their experiences and interactions of young life. Their reactions to the desertion of the father, sufferings of the mother, separation from the mother and being shifted out of their home connected to many uncertainties are shaping their behaviour. At the same time, it can be argued that another perspective, Environmental Determinism is of a stronger effect not only on the children, but also on Kate, because most of later happenings were pure reactions to environment. Children getting closer to Frances instead of Kate, and Kate, who would have fiercely guarded her children in her earlier environment, now lamely hoping that Frances would adopt them is pure reaction to the present environment which she has found difficult to handle. Social facts and psychological reasoning play a lot in children’s mind when they make their emotional choices and usually the single parenting brings out the perplexities, uncertainties and emotional upheavals in children. Attachment theory, developed by Bowlby and Ainsworth had been systemic and is applied to individual and infant-caregiver levels and is regarded as perhaps the best applicable social theory. “On the other hand, and this is one of the most powerful advantages of a general systems approach, the model they have developed is highly consistent with a family –systems model and in fact can easily be seen as a subset of that model,” Greenberg et al (1993, p.60). Single parenting and social psychology are connected with each other along with issues like social class, child’s characteristics, individuality etc. Lone parenting is not an isolated issue and should be studied in the contextual framework of the larger society taking into consideration contextual sources of stress and support, parental dysfunction, and normal range of parental behaviour. A partner or a husband leaving suddenly, or refusing to take responsibility of house and children puts a very great amount of stress on the woman, because she has to cope up with many issues like social, economical, financial, circumstantial and psychological. She has to find answers to the disturbing questions of baffled children about the suddenly absent father. Kate also has to cope up with pregnancy, along with emotional and financial difficulties. She has to sustain herself psychologically and strike a balance between many stifling problems and keep the children steady. In addition, she has to deal with bad, insecure housing, her own and children’s health problems and lack of money. Under the circumstances, it is always not very easy to be proud of raising the children on one’s own and the frequent occurrence of single parenthood is worrying. Merton’s Strain Theory is another sociological theory that would lend a perspective to single parenting. This theory had been present even in Durkheim’s days and Merton has simply applied it to present social circumstances. “Merton argued that the real problem is not created by a sudden social change, as Durkheim proposed, but rather by a social structure that holds out the same goals to all its members without giving them equal means to achieve them. It is this lack of integration between what the culture calls for and what the structure permits that causes deviant behaviour” http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/CURRIC/soc/crime/mert_str.htm Single parenting is a ‘life with a baby index’ and the sole responsibility, without practical, financial and emotional support from the other partner and is never easy. Kate does not seem to be aware of her rights about maternity leave, social security benefits, information on entitlements etc. She is unsure of community support, children’s right to father’s affection, and is unaware of family breakdown problems. This does not mean that women like Kate will never be able to face the problems. According to social psychologists, women cope with the problems much better than men. “Men, while guaranteeing to themselves sociocultural superiority over women, always remain psychologically defensive and insecure. Women, by other contrast, although always of secondary social and cultural status, may in favourable circumstances gain psychological security and a firm sense of worth and importance in spite of this,” Jackson et al (1993, p.60). Strain theory that talks about opportunities apply to Kate’s condition, because, socially she has an inferior status now, because of Michael’s desertion and to make both ends meet, she has to work very hard in spite of being pregnant, and society usually gets surprised that people like Kate do not come triumphantly out of such misery, without realising that society has not provided adequate circumstances for her success. Kate socially feels inferior, about her housing, economy, religion, single status, pregnancy, and more than that, she feels unable to look after her children and provide for them. Understanding a family unit brings together not only Sociology and Psychology, but also the insights and underlying approach of social policy, social psychology and family economics. It has to explore the changes in modern families, growth of individuality, discarding family pride and responsibilities, overlooking ideologies like raising a family, decline of family values, nuclear families, lone parent families, step families and disappearance of extended families, etc. Lone parenting is a major social issue that needs urgent State attention, because growing up children demand it. We have moved away from ‘well-behaved children’, ‘reliable husbands’, and ‘happy families’. Disturbed family life shows how fast the concept of family is changing. UK has the second highest rate of divorces in Europe. It is imperative that the problem is faced squarely. Hence institutions that are concerned with protecting and supporting families with officially approved guidelines have a perpetual duty to interfere. “Thus social policy not only has a caring welfare objective, but also carries with it notions of ‘normality’ to which families are directed to conform,” Muncie et al (1995, p.31). Family is regarded from three angles, family as a process, family as a location, family as a target and family as a norm (ibid). Family problems are seen as social problems today stemming mainly from the needs of young children where their proper and adequate upbringing is disturbed and decisions to intervene are keenly debated. “It would therefore be argued that the state does not intervene enough and despite the rhetoric, fails to support the family. The implication of such failure falls most heavily on large two-parent families, lone-parent families and women generally,” Muncie et al (p.34). This has resulted in irregular boundaries between the family and State and it is connected with ideological dilemmas as model behaviour for family is difficult to establish. Lone parent families are sometimes treated as an homogeneous group, sometimes divided into sub groups (never married lone mothers, widows, deserted, divorced, lone fathers, widowers, separated etc.). Today, they are common mainstream family type and most of them are below average family income. Pregnancies during or after breaking up of the family, usually result in higher infant mortality rate. This will further lead to higher rate of accidents, low expectations, and ignorance of accurate knowledge about benefits. There is another angle of cultural background that says contraception is illegal. It is difficult to ignore cultures, traditions and religions that prevent abortion. Sociological perspective has always been difficult to cope with for disturbed family members mainly because the rate of domestic violence is astonishingly growing according to all statistics. “……national prevalence studies of domestic and family violence show high rates of both men and women who say they have experienced physical abuse from an intimate partner. In the UK study, 13% of women and 9% of men report being subjected to incidents of domestic violence in the past year (Walby & Alllen, 2004)”. Humphreys, Cathy, Domestic Violence and Child Protection: Exploring the role of perpetrator risk assessments, Child and Family Social work, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2206.2006.00464.x Changing family patterns and their influence have affected the society over decades and have resulted in many social policy decisions. State’s readiness to offer help, health, housing, and support to face hardships are very important because these households, thrown into unprecedented financial disarray, usually find themselves below average income line and thus, children suffer a lot as members of such families, mainly through lack of finance and poor housing. “One in seven British children are growing up homeless or in bad housing and this is linked to poor education, exclusion from school and illness and disability, according to new research from Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity” The Policy Press, November 22, 2006. https://www.policypress.org.uk Michael in the case study is an accurate profile of a non-resident parent, which is becoming quite common today. In the second half of the twentieth century, UK adapted a serious social change to informality and diversity, and these changes in family life are linked with differences in structural economic change, accompanied by social upheavals that resulted in many unprecedented alterations in relationships within the family. “In summary, parents’ responses to conflict with their children carry implicit messages about the value of self and the dependability of others, and also provide a source of observational learning. Hence, parental security and conflict behavior may be linked not only to offspring’s attachment security but also to other indices of offspring relational adjustment, such as loneliness and relationship satisfaction” Feeny, Judith A. (2006), Parental attachment and conflict behavior: Implications for offspring’s attachment, loneliness, and relationship satisfaction, Personal Relationships, 13 (2006), 19–36. Printed in USA. The recent rapid growth of lone parenthood has given rise to increasing opportunities, well-paid easy jobs to lone mothers, as potential breadwinners of the family unit. Availability of social security and adequate secure housing has supported many lone parents. Changing attitude to the family and individual contentment and happiness has been of greater significance. Increasing intolerance of male dominance and violence by women has been one of the reasons for breaking up of families. It is argued that State has been unable to do more for lone parents, especially so, for lone mothers because today, family and State are interlinked in many ways. “Another way of characterising the relationship between the state and the family is that states are more concerned with intervening in the family lives of working class people than middle class people. The British state is concerned about lone mothers and absent fathers because of the class background of these groups,” Rowlingson and McKay (2002, p.75). Coming to the psychological perspective of children who are deprived of parental support and care, there are many views. There exists an argument that children brought up by lone parents become self-sufficient and independent. But this view is a feeble one. It is accepted that children who lack care from parents or surrogate parents, or parent figures, usually are affected psychologically and carry the unhappiness and emptiness with them throughout their lives. “Not every aspect of growth can be organized, and if a child grows up without ever having to share the attention of his mother at a deep emotional level this may make some problems for him in later life, but in exchange he will have been spared other problems, the trauma of a bitter divorce, for example,” Renvoize (1985, p.276). In the present society, mostly the children end up with the mother more often than with the father. This also means that State intervention mostly happens to women, rather than men, because women are the traditional carers of children and cannot isolate themselves from children very often and this results in seeking State help. “The experience of working class women make it much more likely that they will seek help from the personal social services, whether because of housing or financial difficulties, or because these or other circumstances have affected their own personal and emotional lives on those of other members of their family,” Langan and Day (1992, p.15). Usually, marital problems like that of Kate and Michael could be connected to many sociological and psychological problems and they usually do not happen on their own and are not isolated as studies show. “However, it has been hypothesized that this is a problem which frequently co-exists with other problems, though it seems unclear whether these other problems are more accurately seen as ‘causes’ of the violence, as ‘enablers’ which allow violent feelings to be expressed, as ‘symptoms’ with the violence of some deeper malaise, or as unrelated to the violence,” A Refuge for Battered Women (1978, p.28). Children, raised in less favoured family circumstances, have very often been concerns of society. Fragmentation of family has significant effect on crime rate, anti social behaviour and leaves sometimes, a psychological scar on the children. Decay of the family has serious social results if not immediately managed by care givers “Cultural capital can go to waste no less than physical capital; only, when it happens it is more difficult to see. Families without fathers produce egoists. We become a society of fatherless families, of men temporarily attached to households of a woman and her children, and not an integral and permanent part of them,” Dennis and Erdos (2000, p.39). As this is going to be the future social perspective, lone parents and their families have to be accepted as State responsibilities and the psychological difficulties could be smoothened. Very little opportunity exists in Kate and Michael coming together to create a genuine family again. But Kate could be psychologically supported by counselling and a job could improve her low security level. If given proper housing with financial support and sharing children’s responsibilities through a care giver like Frances should improve her future and of her children’s. The case has psychological perspectives of Behavioural approach and Environmental Determinism and sociological perspective of Attachment Theory and Strain Theory. If psychological perspectives detail and reason the behaviour and reactions of Kate and her children to the circumstances, sociological theories detail their behaviours as actions and behaviour of the society as possible reactions to the case study. Single parenting is becoming more of a social responsibility in advanced societies, as it is important to protect the children from any possible diverse effects and this could be done only by supporting the single parent who is responsible for bringing them up. It is an important part of social care, as there are instances of similar children getting into psychological stress and becoming social burdens. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. A Refuge for Battered Women (1978), Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London. 2. Dennis, Norman and Erdos, George (2000), Families without Fatherhood, 3rd edn., Institute for the study of civil society, London. 3. Greenberg, Mark T., Dante Cicchetti and E. Mark Cummings (1993), ed., Attachment in the Preschool Years, The University of Chicago Press. 4. Howe, David, Marian Brandon, Diana Hinings, Gillian Schofield (1999), Attachment Theory, Child Maltreatment and Family Support, MacMillan Press Limited, Hampshire. 5. Jackson, Steve et al (1993), ed., Women’s Studies, A Reader, Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York. 6. Muncie, John, Margaret Wetherell, Rudi Dallos and Allan Cochrane (1995), Understanding the Family, Sage Publications, London. 7. Langan, Mary and Day, Lesley (1992), Women, Oppression and Social Work, Routledge, London. 8. Renvoize, Jean (1995), Going Solo, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. 9. Rowlingson, Karen and McKay, Stephen (2002), Lone Parent Families, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, Essex. JOURNALS: 1. Feeny, Judith A. (2006), Parental attachment and conflict behavior: Implications for offspring’s attachment, loneliness,and relationship satisfaction, Learning in Health and Social Care, Personal Relationships, 13 (2006), 19–36. Printed in USA. 2. The Policy Press, November 22, 2006. https://www.policypress.org.uk 3. Humphreys, Cathy, Domestic Violence and Child Protection: Exploring the role of perpetrator risk assessments, Child and Family Social work, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2206.2006.00464.x ONLINE SOURCES: 1. http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/CURRIC/soc/crime/mert_str.htm 2. Read More