For this week, we look at the development of children in different family dynamics and the emotional costs, strains, and conflicts that may arise within the different types of child development. We look at the upbringing of children within different social classes; those who are in the process of migration and those who are brought up by lesbigay parents. Furthermore, we look at the emotional costs and conflicts of family-school partnerships (from a cultural capital perspective), and of eavesdropping children.
In the case of children participating in the process of migration, we are able to see an immense amount of emotional costs that is involved within this process. Orellana et al. highlight the social and emotional relations that the children take part in the immigration process. They specifically looked at 3 types of migrants; migrants in Los Angeles with close ties to Mexico and Central America, “Parachute Kids” who migrated from Korea (most often without their parents) to attend school in the U.S., Yemeni families who live in Oakland and sustain active ties “back home”. Overall transnational families do challenge the societal norms of motherhood and middle class, nuclear families. Parents do actively engage in the process of meeting the needs and wants of their children. Although they are geographically distant from their children migrant parents (those who send their children away to a different country for education or self-development or those who leave their children in their “mother” country so they themselves could earn money in a different country), they also make greater sacrifices while improving the collective interests of families. As Orellana et al. claim, the presence of the children is central to the families’ decision-making processes, and children fundamentally shape the nature and course of families’ migration experiences (Orellana et al., 387). While these families may not use traditional methods of care, migrant families do come up with alternative means of intimacy in order to stay connected. The use of handwritten letters, international telephone calls and advances in modern technology, such as the Internet, have made it easier for these families to emotionally stay interlinked with each other. Stefana Broadbent’s research on “democratization of intimacy”—the breaking down of imposed isolation enforced by institutions—enforces what Orellana et al. claim. The development in communication technology is capable of cultivating relationships across barriers and even transnational borders. This refutes the argument that there will be a decline in emotional care and love within families that are undergoing the process of migration.
Here is the link for Stefana Broadbent’s lecture on how the Internet enables intimacy: http://www.ted.com/talks/stefana_broadbent_how_the_internet_enables_intimacy.html
Emotional costs are also brought up in Lareau’s article, which focuses on the influences of social class differences in family-school relationships in white working-class and middle-class families. A study including observations of elementary classrooms and interviews with parents, teachers, and principals in different communities indicated that “social class provides parents with unequal resources to comply with teachers’ requests for parental participation” (p.73). Parental involvement could do the opposite of what is desired resulting in emotional costs for the children; “a girl in the lowest reading group began developing stomach aches during the reading period…” (p.77). Teachers from the upper-middle-class school were concerned about the amount of pressure parents placed on their children at home; this “could become counterproductive when it increased the child’s anxiety level and produced negative learning experiences” (p.76).
These teachers, at the upper-middle-class school, also mentioned that parents challenged their professional expertise in certain cases causing straining conflict in which case “parental involvement was unhelpful” (p.77). Other conflicts arose inevitably due to Lareau’s observations of “the variations in teachers’ styles as well as in the way they [teachers] implemented the model of home-school partnerships” (p.76). This meant that parents were judged differently depending on the teacher causing disagreements on the issue of pressure and support. Lareau describes how “the first grade teacher…thought one boy’s father placed too much pressure on him, but the second-grade teacher judged the family to be supportive and helpful” (p.76).
Continuing with the theme of straining conflict; are the children of lesbigay parents more vulnerable in becoming “deviant” and “abnormal”? Stacey and Biblarz’s article look at whether children with lesbigay parents are at higher risk for a variety of negative outcomes. The hetero-normative presumptions, which the society enforces, beget strain and conflict towards those who do not form a traditional, nuclear family. Stigmatization related to sexual orientation and homophobia has led to an increase in researches done that are not at all sympathetic towards lesbigay parents. For instance, Stacey and Biblarz mention Wardle, a Brigham Young University professor, who “argued for a presumptive judicial standard in favor of awarding child custody to heterosexual married couples” (Stacey & Biblarz, 160) and claimed that same-sex parents are incapable of bringing up healthy children. However, after reviewing some of the researches themselves, Stacey and Biblarz come to a conclusion that there are no differences in developmental outcomes between children raised by lesbigay parents and those raised by heterosexual parents. Similar to the migrant families, same-sex couples redefine “motherhood” by developing gender-neutral roles. In contrast to existing criticisms, qualitative studies have suggested that families with same-sex parents tend to embrace high standards of emotional intimacy and that there are no significant disadvantages linked to the development of children with lesbigay parents.
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