Washington, March 25 (ANI): Supportive parents can help teenagers from becoming materialistic, a new study claims.
University of Arizona marketing researcher Lan Nguyen Chaplin claims that adolescents of this age have been characterized as the most materialistic generation in history.
He insists parents have a very important role to play.
Chaplin said: “Instead of just looking at how parents and peers encourage materialism in teenagers, we also examine how they decrease materialism. We view parents and peers as important sources of emotional support and psychological well-being, which ultimately affects teenagers” level of materialism.
“We find that supportive parents and peers boost adolescents” self-esteem, which decreases their need to embrace material goods as a way to develop positive self-perceptions.”
Chaplin and co-author Deborah Roedder John of the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management, studied 12- to 18-year-olds and found that it is possible for parents to reduce their adolescents” drive for material goods.
They found that teenagers who have supportive and accepting parents and peers in their lives are less materialistic. Parents and peers can provide the support and acceptance that teens crave, which reduces their need to focus on expensive material goods as a substitute for self-worth.
Chaplin explained: “Parents and peers play a very important role in teenagers” lives. They provide the much needed emotional support and contribute greatly to teenagers” feelings of self-worth. When teens feel better about themselves, they are less likely to feel the need to use material possessions to boost their self-esteem and achieve happiness.”
The paper titled, “Interpersonal Influences on Adolescent Materialism: A New Look at the Role of Parents and Peers,” will soon be published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology. (ANI)
Spanking found to have negative effects on low-income toddlers
Washington, September 16 (ANI): Spanking negatively affects the behaviour of toddlers in low-income families, according to a new study.
Published in the journal Child Development, the longitudinal study looked at how low-income parents discipline their young children.
It showed that spanking 1-year-olds leads to more aggressive behaviours and less sophisticated cognitive development in the next two years.
Verbal punishment, however, was not found to be associated with such effects, especially when it was accompanied by emotional support from mothers.
Besides, 1-year-olds’ fussiness predicted spanking and verbal punishment at ages 1, 2, and 3.
The study explored whether mothers’ behaviours lead to problematic behaviour in children, whether children’s challenging behaviours elicit harsher discipline, or both.
It looked at more than 2,500 exclusively low-income White, African American, and Mexican-American mothers and their young children, interviewing and observing them at home when the children were 1, 2, and 3 years old.
All participants’ family incomes were at or below the federal poverty level.
Using their own interpretations of spanking, mothers reported how often anyone in the home had spanked their children in the past week.
The study also looked at how often mothers verbally punished-scolded, yelled, or made negative comments-their children.
It showed that African American children were spanked and verbally punished significantly more than the other children in the study.
The authors speculated that that might be due to cultural factors, such as belief in the importance of children’s respect for elders and in the value of physical discipline to instil that respect.
Moreover, some African American mothers said that in preparing their children for a harsh, physically dangerous, and racially discriminating world, there was little room for error in their childrearing.
The study also shed light on information about the effects of such types of discipline.
“Our findings clearly indicate that spanking affects children’s development,” said Lisa J. Berlin, research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University and the study’s lead author.
Specifically, children who were spanked more often at 1 behaved more aggressively when they were 2, and had lower scores on tests measuring thinking skills when they were 3.
Similar findings were made even after taking into consideration such family characteristics as mothers’ race and ethnicity, age, and education; family income and structure; and the children’s gender.
The study also found that children who were more aggressive at age 2, and had lower cognitive development scores at ages 1 and 2, were not spanked more at ages 2 and 3.
“So the mothers’ behaviours look more influential than the children’s,” said Berlin.
Unlike spanking, however, verbal punishment alone didn’t affect either children’s aggression or their cognitive development.
Interestingly, when verbal punishment was accompanied by emotional support from moms, the children did better on the tests of cognitive ability. (ANI)