When you’re on the road to parenting, it’s easy to forget that the ultimate goal is to raise well-adjusted, happy, fully developed adults. These goal posts can seem distant and abstract, especially for those of us with young children, and it can be very easy to focus only on the strategies we need to succeed in our daily lives. However, it’s good to step back from time to time and consider the bigger picture.
So can research give us insight here? Can we look at well-functioning adults and find out what their parents did “right” and “wrong”? However, researchers have done so by following people from childhood to adulthood and looking at parenting practices associated with “psychological well-being” in adulthood. Psychological well-being is a measure of life satisfaction and mental health that includes personal growth, self-acceptance and meaning in life (translation: how well adjusted you are). I think we can all agree that this is something we would want for our children.
Two relatively large studies (see here and here) have found two aspects of parenting that are associated with mental health as adults:
- High standards of parental care: Parental care refers to a warm and loving relationship with parents. Parental care has been linked to having good relationships later in life. This may be because parent-child relationships provide a template for healthy relationships for their children.
- Low levels of mental control: Mind control is a parenting technique that involves trying to control your child’s thoughts and feelings. This may involve instilling guilt, manipulating your child into feeling or thinking the way you want them to think, shaming, inappropriateness, personal attacks, or withdrawing affection when your child does not share your thoughts or feelings. Mind control can be compared to behavior control, which simply means putting limits on your child’s behavior. Cognitive control is generally associated with worse psychological outcomes while behavioral control is associated with better outcomes.
What does parental care really look like in practice?
- Being affectionate (both physically and verbally) (see this previous newsletter for tips on how to be more affectionate)
- Listening and really wanting to understand your child’s problems and concerns
- Use a warm and friendly voice with them and show them positive feelings
- Giving them praise and positive attention whenever possible
- Show your children that you enjoy spending time with them and are interested in what they have to say
- Helping them feel better when they are upset
- Making them feel valued and important
What do low levels of psychological control look like in practice?
- Encouraging your child’s development of independence without you
- Letting them know that you trust them
- Allowing them to make their own decisions whenever possible
- Validate their feelings even when you don’t have the same feelings
- Asking about their thoughts and opinions and really listening to what they have to say
- Allowing them to explore their interests and passions
General Translation
