Parenting in US

Now that we saw the parenting characteristics in India and about the developments and the changes that happen in India, let us now focus on the impact of parenting and its effects and affects for the young children in United States, to just understand the variation and similarity
with the global scenario.

In US, examining the impact of Parenting, developmental psychologists have found themselves on the defensive. It was a bit strange to find that the parents had little or absolutely no influence on the characteristics of their children. In particular in majority of the cases, parents lack to shape the children's personality and long-term development. Putting together evidence from several areas of psychology and sociology, an US Researcher Harris concluded that " Personality in US is shaped by the experiences children have outside the home--in particular, experiences with peers--and that any similarities between parents and children are due to shared genes and a shared culture". Her ideas garnered widespread media attention, including an oft-cited article in The New Yorker.

True, that is what the things that are actually happening in the United States. Children are more influenced by the peer activities and most of characteristics get molded only with the peers, while in contrast in India, children's behavior is influenced majorly by the activities done at home or the profession and occupation of the parents. In many cases in US, the children when they are mostly at home, their character gets molded by the activities of their parents and their occupation.

The major researches done to find the importance of parenting in US, came with the following reasoning :

• Along with parenting style and disciplinary approaches, parents influence the schools their children attend, the foods they eat and even the neighborhood--by choice or circumstances--in which they grow up, but this can be only until a very young age, much lesser than that of the Indian Scenario.
• Today, however, most researchers have become more sophisticated in their theories and studies and examine parenting as one of many factors influencing child development.
  

"We now see parenting less in terms of simple parent-to-child influence, and more as a set of interactive processes whereby parents and children react to each other and influence each other from the moment a child is born," writes Stanford University's Eleanor Maccoby, PhD.

• The behavioral genetics work finds that genes account for as much as 50 percent of the variance in certain behavioral traits and that siblings' shared environment--the home and parenting--has little influence on these traits.
• Maccoby, unlike other researchers, shows that a given parenting style can have different effects on children with different temperaments.
• The result is that parenting can function to make children in the same family different rather than alike.
  
  In terms of academics, some eminent research studies suggest that 50 percent of the variation between high-and low-functioning children results from influences that occur before children enter school. But even the half that results from influences after children start school may be mediated by family factors. For example, some prominent researchers find that social skills, including a child's ability to sit still and concentrate, have an effect on academic performance. So does it in anyway suggest that parenting has got to do with children's academics and obviously their career ? Research are yet to prove that!

SOURCES: Article "How do Parents Matter ? " in American Psychology Association website, www.apa.org