Keating – parenting

One of the most rigorous and replicated findings in all of developmental psychology is that parental effects do matter and they matter to a very substantial degree and that standard findings have been replicated also within that literature that essentially it’s a combination of warmth and responsiveness of the parental figures in the early years particularly mother who’s typically the primary caretaker. When the mother is the primary caretaker it’s that warmth and responsiveness. Whoever the primary caretaker is that’s an important thing, and by warmth it’s obviously means kind of general acceptance, a sense of love and affection, emotionally communicated affection as well as responsiveness to needs as they arise, so responsiveness that’s time sensitive; the younger the child, the more time sensitive those responsiveness needs are. So there’s a warmth responsiveness dimension, higher being better, but then there’s also a dimension that is in the area of expectations or demands; the sorts of things where parents place limits on their children that children get to understand that there are limits, because for many children, for most children, the absence of limits is a terrifying thing, so needing to have the structure of where the edges are in their behaviour, where the edges are in relationships, where the edges are in things that they do, is an equally important component to their felt security and to their ability to learn to function, to explore and to be comfortable in the world.