Family and Work

Traditionally, education setup

Laid a very strict base and guidelines for all family members in a family setup. Children were able to interiorize their position as parents as they grew up, passing on from generation to generation and family to family. Children were able to internalize their parent’s position as a mother or father. A mother was always in charge of household chores such as washing, cooking, and child care. A parent, on the other hand, was known as the family’s leader (Abrhiem, 2014). A father or husband was often the family’s provider. According to this type of education and mentality, each partner in the family has a set of established roles and responsibilities in both public and private life. The other partner could not take over the roles of the other partner in the family (Linduhl & Hull, 2015).

The traditional gender role are nowadays changing

But changing those already roles is very difficult. This is not because the woman has no necessary skills to take over man’s role and vice versa. Nature dictates that a man to be very emotional and a woman to be ambitious, independent and more active in undertaking their family roles and tasks.

Problem Identification

In our days, the modern woman is more liberty in choosing between a modern family models. There are different type of women in the modern world; the family woman, the career woman and the family-career woman. A family woman is more concerned in the traditional roles of being a woman. Mostly, a family woman is referred to as a house wife. This type of a woman model prioritizes mostly on being obedient to the husband and is anchored to the principals of the traditional family.

A career woman is a woman who has set almost all her priorities to career life.

This type of a woman always set her career goals as more important than family roles. Another woman is a middle model who is sandwiched between career and family.

These choices and variety of women are affected or “born” due to their race, social status, cultural beliefs and values, and educational levels.

Case Analysis

Due to the growing needs of a modern woman, professional success is becoming more interesting than family roles. This is because professional tries to bring something new in a woman than the traditional values. Nowadays, a successful woman is gauged not only using family, but also using professional achievement. Women are more motivated to choose a professional career for financial stability and independency in order to integrate in the modern society and probably to be able to control and not be controlled. All these reasons offer a woman a more psychological equilibrium (Linduhl & Hull , 2015).

In a family like Marshall and Cynthia’s, men will consider it as Cynthia’s career as a source of conflict. Cynthia as a woman neglects her contributions and roles to the family. This is an imminent change in Marshall’s change of authority. There is a competition in the family which can bring about a deterioration in the family status.

Marshall makes Cynthia to choose between her parents and the family. In the first step, Cynthia is displaying a character for a modern woman who does not value her family more than other roles. Cynthia is not married to her parent. She is married to Marshall. Marrying someone means that you are together the core of the family. It is not exactly a way of replacing your parents and other parental families

Theoretical Selection:

Parenting conflicts in the contemporary families can be described by a number of theories. However, in this case of Marshall and Cynthia, self-determination theory of parenting can be used to analyze the conflict. According to Joussemet, Koestner, and Landry (2008) self determination theory entails teaching kids regulations and values that are essential in effective functioning of the society and also nuturing them to pursue their unique capacities and interests. The key goal is to facilitate internalization where the children needs to take in the principal social regulations that will make them autonomuous (Miguel , Valentim , & Cerugati , 2009). In this case, Marshall due to his early childhood parenting sees that giving their daughter Sylvia early freedom is the right parenting. On the other, Cynthia who was brough up in a strict, traditional, and religious family needs her daughter Sylvia to learn the morals of being responsible and working extra hard.

According to the social development theory, endorsing desrable behavior in a child shoud concur with both external and internal forces that stimulates the behavior. Parents need to performa this responsibility without selfishness or independence motive rather than creating harmonios, integrated functioning, and volational experinces (Abrhiem , 2014). In this case, there are two factors that will determine social development and personality of Slyvia. These are internalization and intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation entails interesting actitivities thatmakes Sylvia happy such as having a phone during late hours to chat with friends on social media. On the other, internalization attributes includes the critical behaviors and values Sylivia’s mother is advocating for which will help Sylivia grow up into a responsible woman.In this context, parents act as an impotant social context that can either undermine or facilitate the intenalization and intrinsic motivation of Sylvia. Unfortuantely in this family, Marshall seems to be more skewed towads intrinsic motivation while Cynthia holds on internalization of key social behavior and values.

Alternative Strategies:

There is two key alternative that can be used to solve the problem. Thus includes offering autonomy support and emphasizing on the psychological control which is both aimed at supporting Marshal and Cynthia in raising Sylvia despite their ideological differences.

Autonomy Support

This entails active support of Sylvia’s capacity and capabilities to be autonomous and self-initiating. According to Joussemet, Koestner, and Landry (2008), autonomous support is one of the main components that leads to successful parenting when integrated with structure and involvement. In this family case, encouraging Sylvia to help in household chores requires autonomous support since Cynthia aims at fostering self-regulation and autonomous for Sylvia’s social development rather than stressing on compliance. Since tasks like cleaning up the home and other in-house chore are not enjoyable inherently to Sylvia, she must pass through internationalization which will require proactive approach in supporting her autonomy (Miguel, Valentim, & Cerugati, 2009). To achieve this goal, both Cynthia and Marshal should have a mutual responsibility to understand the social development and rationale of internalization.

Supporting Sylvia autonomously will require observance of four main issues as suggested by Joussemet, Koestner, and Landry (2008). First, both parents should offer the explanation and rationale for the development of behavior and values to Sylvia. Second, the parents should recognize the perspectives and feelings if Sylivia. For instance, in this case, sylvia complains and even is envious of her brothers who seem no to take part in the household chores. Understanding her feeling will entail explaining that the other two kids are still small but will join her when they mature enough. Thirdly, offering Sylvia with choices and establishing motivation techniques (Linduhl & Hull, 2015). For example, promising her that she will have access to the phone only if she finishes the assigned home duties. Lastly, the parents should minimize the use of various controlling techniques (Abrhiem, 2014). In this case, the divergent parental decisions from the paternal and maternal sides result from individuals early experience. These experiences are highly controlling the way each sees how Sylvia should be brought up. Therefore, Marshal and Cynthia need to abandon some of this influences and design ways to support Sylvia grow up in a more responsible and autonomous adult.

Advantages

Sylvia will be allowed to express her feelings, and both parents will be involved in explaining to her the rationales of social behaviors and values.

There will be a mutual understanding in the family where parental roles will be performed effectively with less controlling approaches.

Disadvantages

It may be difficult for each parent to drop the respective stereotypes about child development and growth.

Cynthia may lose the connection with her father since she may not follow his Christian teachings and values of raising Sylvia.

Psychological Control

In this approach, the parental control will aim at intruding Sylvia’s psychological world. In this case, the parents can use pressure to enable Sylvia to feel, behave, or think in a specifically required way through techniques like an invalidation of feelings, guilt induction, or love withdrawal (Joussemet, Koestner, & Landry, 2008). However, this can only work if both parents have mutual reasoning towards social development of Sylvia. This approach may highly favor Cynthia’s decision of molding her daughter since Cynthia was brought up in such a family which was strict and utilized psychological control.

Advantages

Due to the intervention techniques such as love withdrawal and guilt induction, Sylvia may grow up knowing the exact morals, values, and behaviors that are desirable in the community.

It will create an authoritative parenting environment which will initiate the best behavior outcome.

Disadvantages

Psychological control will have detriments optimal internalization because Sylvia will grow up with sheer fear of losing parental love if she does not meet the expectations.

Psychological control entails regulations, limits, and enforced rules that may deny Sylvia her freedoms during this development stage.

Conclusion:

From the above case, the current parental guiding is highly challenged especially when parents had different rise backgrounds that leads to individual differences in viewing motivational attributes to the child’s social development. The case of Marshal and Cynthia exhibits such differences. Application of social development theory in the above case has shown that: the relationship between the child and parent highly depends on the autonomous support; fostering the autonomy of the kid enhances attachment, and supporting children autonomy requires less application of control influences.

References

Joussemet, M., Koestner, R., & Landry, R. (2008). A Self-Determination Theory Perspective on Parenting. Canadian Psychology, 49(3), 194-200.

Abrhiem, T. H. (2014). The Role of Parenting Styles in Psychosocial Development of Adolescents. Business and Management Review, 3(11), 47-52.

Linduhl, B., & Hull, G. (2015). Applied Human Behavior in the Social Environment (1st ed.). New York: Pearson.

Miguel, I., Valentim, J. P., & Cerugati, F. (2009). Parental ideas and their role in childrearing: the idea-behavior connection. Parental ideas and their role in childrearing, 3(1), 225-254.