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Family environment and child development
Tina Kavčič
Full text (pdf) | Views: 52 | Written in Slovene. | Published: April 4, 2005
Abstract: The paper presents an overview of research findings on influence of family environment, especially parental behaviour, on child's development. Contemporary authors question early socialization researchers' claims that family characteristics and parental behaviour have important influence on behaviour of their children. Later researchers examined the size and durability of possible effects of family environment on child development. In addition, they focused on establishing whether it is actually the parental behaviour that influences child's development or, on the contrary, parental behaviour represents mainly a reaction to child's characteristics. Behaviour genetic studies have provided evidence that many traditional measures of family environment, including measures of parental behaviour, show genetic influence, thus reflecting genetically influenced child characteristics. Behaviour geneticists also suggest that environmental influences on child (personality) development include predominantly non-shared environment, i.e. individual child's specific experiences, his/her own perceptions and interpretations of objectively same events. Based on empirically determined significant genetic effects on most behavioural traits and inconclusive results of studies on effects of family environment on child development some authors believe that it is not the parents, but rather genetic factor and/or peers who have the key role in child development. With respect to findings of behaviour genetics numerous recent studies of relations between family environment and child development involve child specific measures of (extra)familial environment and examine the interactions between characteristics of an individual and those of his/her environment.
Keywords: home environment, parental behaviour, socialization, behavioural genetics, genotype environment interaction
