Deck 5: Parenting Young Children: Decisions and Realities

Question 1

Which of the following statements about current trends in parenting and work is true?

A) Young adults are having fewer children, but having them earlier in their lives than previous generations.
B) Expectations facing parents at home and in the workplace are rising.
C) Expectations facing parents at home are decreasing and at the workplace are rising.
D) Expectations facing parents have become significantly more equal as the number of women in the paid workforce has increased.
E) All of the above

Answer 1

Expectations facing parents at home and in the workplace are rising.

Question 2

Who wrote the ground-breaking book on the historical construction of childhood titled Centuries of Childhood?

A) Sharon Hays
B) Phillipe Aries
C) Bonnie Fox
D) John Bowlby
E) Dr. Spock

Answer 2

Phillipe Aries

Question 3

As Jenks points out in their 2005 research, a collective understanding of adolescence as a distinct period in the life course did not exist until which period?

A) The early 1800s
B) The beginning of the 1900s
C) Following the Second World War
D) Following the Vietnam War
E) Following the invention of the internet

Answer 3

Following the Second World War

Question 4

Glenda Wall, the author of Chapter 5, concluded which of the following from her research on parenting advice from the 1980s and the 2000s?

A) Expectations of motherhood remained consistent between these decades.
B) Mothers were encouraged to focus more on their own needs in the 2000s.
C) Mothers were encouraged to focus less on their own needs in the 2000s.
D) Ideas about parenting became focused on fathers in the 2000s.
E) Ideas about parenting became more focused on gender equality in these decades.

Question 5

The term "intensive mothering" was coined by Sharon Hays in which year?

A) 1957
B) 1976
C) 1996
D) 2006
E) 2016

Question 6

What were the "cultural contradictions" Sharon Hays concluded were at the core of modern motherhood?

A) The fact that the logic of intensive parenting clashed with the logic of the marketplace that demanded workers undivided attention.
B) The fact that the logic of intensive parenting clashed with the idea of reliance.
C) The fact that the logic of intensive parenting clashed with gender equality and feminism.
D) The fact that the logic of intensive parenting clashed with new brain research.
E) The fact that the logic of intensive parenting clashed with the biological needs of new mothers.

Question 7

Which ideas are at the core of John Bowlby's popular theories such as maternal deprivation and attachment?

A) Gendered assumptions about the nature of motherhood
B) Gender assumptions about the nature of childhood
C) Racist notions of motherhood
D) Heterosexist assumptions about family relationships
E) Christian assumptions about family roles

Question 8

When was the theory of maternal deprivation developed?

A) 1920s
B) 1930s
C) 1950s
D) 1960s
E) 1980s

Question 9

Following World War II, there was a shift in child-rearing literature as it began to focus extensively on which aspects of a child's life?

A) psychological and emotional well-being
B) Physical health and fitness
C) Emotional maturity and resilience
D) Intellectual maturity and academics
E) Cultural and community well-being

Question 10

Which two cultural and social developments in Western societies resulted in a rapid escalation in the intensity of parenthood in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries?

A) Neo-liberal rationality and increased LGBTQI+ families
B) Neo-liberal rationality and the promotion of gender equality in the media
C) Gender equality in the workforce and "new brain research"
D) Changing views of children's rights and "new brain research" hype in media
E) Neo-liberal rationality and the promotion of "new brain research" hype in media

Question 11

Which of the following was central to the neo-liberal ideologies that informed the shift to the cultural expectations of intensive parenting?

A) Collective responsibility
B) Individual responsibility
C) Feminism and gender equality
D) Child-centred beliefs
E) New brain research

Question 12

Research on gender and intensive parenting has identified which trends in mothers' experience in heterosexual, two-parent families?

A) Mothers who work full-time continue to do significantly more household work than fathers.
B) Mothers feel more guilt than fathers do for spending time away from their children.
C) Mothers feel more responsible for upholding expectations of intensive parenting.
D) Both a and b
E) All of a, b, and c

Question 13

The 1980s saw the beginnings of the global spread of ____________ politics aimed at dismantling the welfare state.

A) Neo-liberal
B) Risk-Concerned
C) Feminist
D) Human Rights
E) Child-centred

Question 14

What was the outcome of the case where a British Columbian father was ordered by child welfare authorities to stop letting his four children, aged seven through eleven, take a public bus to school?

A) The case was almost immediately dropped after the public outcry and media coverage.
B) The father was found guilty of negligence.
C) The father won his appeal, after 3 years of court cases and appeals.
D) The father was found guilty of negligence and the children were removed from his care.
E) The case was resolved quickly in favour of the father.

Question 15

Brain development advice in the 1990s built on the assumptions of which of the following theories?

A) Attachment theory
B) Intensive motherhood
C) Neoliberalism
D) Child-centred parenting
E) Risk culture theory

Question 16

"Baby Einstein" videos are an example of the popularity of which trend in parenting advice?

A) Resilience-focused parenting
B) Child-centred parenting
C) Intensive parenting
D) New brain research
E) Neoliberalism

Question 17

The slogan "The years before five last the rest of their lives" is an example of which popular trend in child-rearing advice?

A) New Brain Research
B) Neoliberalism
C) Intensive Parenting
D) Intensive Mothering
E) Constructive Parenting

Question 18

As a result of evolving parenting advice, lessons and enrichment classes of various sorts for young children grew much more popular among the middle class during which decade?

A) 1950s
B) 1960s
C) 1980s
D) 1990s
E) 2000s

Question 19

Building resilience in children is central to parenting expectations today. However, research on resilience has historically focused on which group?

A) Those who experienced traumatic or seriously adverse life conditions and went on to lead successful lives nonetheless
B) Those who were raised in orphanages or other institutions in their childhood and lacked maternal care
C) Those who lost their parents in World War II but continued to raise healthy children as adults
D) Those who experienced racism in their childhood
E) Working mothers who had successful careers and went on to have many children

Question 20

Which of the following is not a way that contemporary parenting experts suggest parents build resilience in their children?

A) Ensuring secure attachment
B) Teaching children to regulate their emotions
C) Be highly responsive to unhappiness
D) Creating a culture of community over individualism
E) Teaching children to control emotions such as anger and sadness

Question 21

What impact does the transition to parenthood have on gender inequalities in heterosexual relationships?

A) Inequalities tend to increase.
B) Inequalities tend to remain the same as prior to parenthood.
C) Inequalities tend to decrease.
D) Outcomes depend on access to parental leave.
E) Outcomes depend on if the mother works outside the home.

Question 22

Trends in recent decades point to which trend in fathers' involvement in household and childcare?

A) A level of involvement that is consistent with previous decades
B) A rapid improvement
C) A range of experiences based on wealth and race
D) A slow but steady improvement
E) A decline in involvement

Question 23

A recent survey suggested how many Canadian mothers have considered quitting their job as a result of the parenting demands during the COVID-19 pandemic?

A) About one-third
B) About half
C) About two-thirds
D) About ninety per cent
E) No survey research has been completed on this topic yet.

Question 24

Which of the following are noted as significant factors in Canadian families being able to ride out the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic without experiencing a significant increase in gender inequality in the home?

A) Financial and educational resources
B) Financial and mental healthcare resources
C) Educational and community resources
D) Private healthcare resources
E) Research suggests that social class and access to resources made no difference in this area.

Question 25

Intensive parenting as an ideology is based on the assumption that parents have the time, financial resources, and support to spend ample time on all except which of the following?

A) Teaching and playing with their children when they are young
B) Be highly involved in their schooling and academic endeavours
C) Teaching them relationship skills and mindfulness
D) Enrol them in various sporting activities
E) Enrol them in various enrichment activities

Question 26

Intensive parenting can be best understood as which of the following?

A) A middle-class ideal
B) A hetero-normative ideal
C) The dominant ideal across social classes
D) A cross-cultural ideal
E) A class-inclusive ideal

Question 27

Studies of intensive parenting have found that less privileged mothers tend to lack the time, financial resources, and ________ to engage in highly intensive parenting.

A) social capital
B) confidence
C) skills
D) social relationships
E) educational resources

Question 28

Studies find which of the following trends true for less-privileged parents?

A) Parents teach their children to be less deferential to parental and other authority.
B) Parents teach their children to be more deferential to parental and other authority.
C) Parents teach their children to be more individualistic and competitive.
D) Parents teach their children to be less individualistic and competitive.
E) Parents teach their children to have more rigorous structure in their daily lives.

Question 29

Research by Lareau (2002, 2003) found that while children whose parents engaged in concerted cultivation tended to display a growing sense of entitlement and self-confidence that would likely help them succeed in later life, they had more difficulty with which of the following?

A) Establishing a physically healthy lifestyle
B) Entertaining themselves
C) Maintaining relationships in childhood
D) Maintaining relationships in adulthood
E) Succeeding academically

Question 30

According to Margaret Nelson's 2010 study, which group of parents is more open to installing monitoring software on their children's digital devices?

A) Parents that practiced intensive parenting
B) Middle- and upper-class parents
C) Less privileged parents
D) LGBTQI+ parents
E) This was equal among all groups of parents.

Question 31

In the context of parenting advice material, which of the following terms is best described as the advice that forefronts the needs of children and positions children's needs to opposition to those of parents?

A) Child-Centred
B) Child-Focused
C) Child Rights-based
D) Child-Prioritized
E) Attachment-Centred

Question 32

Which is a key aspect of the concept of concerted cultivation?

A) Deference to authority and control of emotions
B) Intensive enrolment of children in organized activities
C) Concerted efforts to build resilience in children
D) Homeschooling or alternative schooling of children
E) Efforts to parent children in a matter that is equitable between both parents

Question 33

Which of the following have been identified as consequences of expectations and practices around intensive parenting?

A) Middle-class parents are more confident in their parenting decisions.
B) Middle-class parents often suffer burnout and mental health problems from the demands of intensive parenting.
C) For marginalized parents, child welfare authorities may intervene if expectations of intensive parenting are not met.
D) Both b and c
E) All of the above

Question 34

Parenting in Canadian society can be described as ______________

A) promoting gender equality and resilience.
B) highly focused on emotional regulation and well-being.
C) extremely diverse with a wide range of socially acceptable practices and ideologies.
D) highly child-centred and intensive.
E) highly flexible yet intensive.

Question 35

Dominant cultural understandings of good parenting assume that parents are individually
Responsible for and have control over their children's future success so long as they _______________

A) educate themselves using expert advice.
B) plan to carefully manage risk.
C) expend the time, energy, and financial resources to ensure this success.
D) Both a and b
E) All of a, b, and c

Question 36

Because of the increasing demands of the workplace, the amount of time, money, and emotional energy needed to meet the standards of good parenting have decreased significantly over the last three decades.

Question 37

Overall, recent research on the sociology of the family embraces the idea that both parenthood and childhood are social constructions.

Question 38

Phillipe Aries' ground-breaking work on childhood was in the field of psychology.

Question 39

As explained in Jenks' research, a collective understanding of adolescence as a distinct period in the life course emerged in the 1910s.

Question 40

As the author of this chapter, Glenda Wall, describes her own research on parenting advice from the 1980s and 2000s, her findings suggest that expectations of motherhood have remained consistent throughout these decades.

Question 41

Sharon Hayes coined the term "intensive mothering" in her 1996 book The Contradictions of Motherhood.

Question 42

Intensive parenting expectations set the standard for parenting in Canada and the West for most of the 1990s, but this is no longer the dominant expectation of parenting.

Question 43

Scholars in various fields have traced the ways in which standards of good middle-class parenting have steadily increased with the aim of enhancing children's intellectual ability and future chances of success.

Question 44

Research on parenting advice from the past 40 years demonstrates that over time children's needs and well-being have been increasingly divorced from and opposed to parents' needs and well-being.

Question 45

Research shows that in 2015, mothers in Canada were responsible for about 80% of household work.

Question 46

Mothers who work full-time outside the home have a significantly more equitable division of childcare and household responsibilities than stay-at-home mothers.

Question 47

Expert child-rearing advice in the first part of the twentieth century tended to focus on parents' responsibility for children's physical health.

Question 48

In post-World War II parenting advice literature, children were cast as more innocent and psychologically vulnerable than in previous eras.

Question 49

Following World War II, the prevalence of modern technology in the household allowed parenting, and mothering in particular, to become much less time-consuming.

Question 50

In the 1980s, as a result of neo-liberal ideologies, parenting became much less child-centred than in previous decades.

Question 51

Neo-liberal political ideas stressed collective responsibility and greater community concern for social ills.

Question 52

In the 1960s, new advances in neuroscience led to child-rearing experts claiming that parents could literally affect the way that their children's brains were wired.

Question 53

Brain development advice related to child-rearing was built on the assumptions of attachment theory.

Question 54

While brain development advice was popular in the medical research community in the 1990s, it was not common in the media or targeted towards the general public.

Question 55

The lessons and enrichment classes of various sorts for young children that we see today grew much more popular among the middle class during the 1970s.

Question 56

Studies show that mothers today spend much less engaged, one-on-one time with young children today than they did in the 1970s when the majority of mothers of young children were not in the workforce.

Question 57

Developing resilience in children is a key theme in parenting advice today.

Question 58

Intensive parenting is based on the assumption that parents have the time, financial resources, and supports to involve their children in community-oriented activities.

Question 59

Scholars of present-day parenting trends have noticed that we are witnessing an increased focus by experts on the need to build resilience in children.

Question 60

Children in lower-income households where intensive parenting is less feasible have much lower outcomes of success in all areas of their lives.

Question 61

While mothers are typically more responsible for childcare in Canadian families, they also report feeling equally responsible for performing intensive parenting as fathers.

Question 62

Nelson (2010) noted that the professional, middle-class parents in her study, the ones who practiced the most intensive parenting styles, also much more vehemently rejected the use of technology for surveilling and monitoring their children's online activities.

Question 63

In Nelson's research on parents' use of surveillance software to monitor their children's online activities, a key finding was that wealthier parents were more likely to state that they did not trust their children, but they were also more accepting of imperfect behaviour on the part of their children.

Question 64

Research on parenting during the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that parents who lost their jobs faced extraordinary challenges, while parents who shifted their jobs to work-from-home faced very few challenges.

Question 65

Middle-class parents often suffer stress, burnout, and mental health problems from the demands associated with intensive parenting.

Question 66

Research in recent decades points to a slow but steady improvement in fathers' involvement in housework and childcare in Canada.

Question 67

Parenting in Canadian society is highly child-centred and intensive.

Question 68

Contemporary expert and cultural understandings of good parenting are based on neo-liberal assumptions of individual self-management, responsibility, and lack of control over life outcomes.

Question 69

Social capital refers to the networks and social supports that people have around them and can draw on in times of need.
Short

Question 70

Explain how childhood is a social construction.

Question 71

How did parenting advice and expectations change following the Second World War?

Question 72

Discuss how parenting expectations over the past 75 years have become increasingly child-centred.

Question 73

What is concerted cultivation and how does it connect to intensive parenting?

Question 74

What are the core assumptions of the ideology of intensive parenting?

Question 75

What is risk culture and how is it connected to contemporary parenting expectations?

Question 76

How did "new brain research" shape parenting advice and expectations in the 1990s?

Question 77

Explain how focusing on building resilience in children has contributed to over-parenting.

Question 78

What are some dominant cultural understandings and representations of gender and parenthood today?

Question 79

How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted parenting?

Question 80

What are some of the negative impacts of intensive parenting on mothers?