The Hierarchical Relationship and Social Impact of Parenting

By Haonan Li, Zhaoyang Li, Jie Tao and Doris Yanzi Ji

Upbringing and parenting runs through the child's growth process. This chapter starts with the analysis of the characteristics of parenting, and establishes a hierarchical relationship model of parenting. At the same time, it analyses the definition and connotation of each level of the model, instructing parents to recognize what resources they have in the process of upbringing and parenting, what resources can be used, and how to achieve the ideal goal of parenting and raising children. Avoid misunderstandings or detours.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Human Parenting Research Center
• Release date: Dec 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9783967997248

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Chapter 1: The analysis of the hierarchical relationship of parenting

Reading guide of this chapter: upbringing and parenting runs through the child's growth process. This chapter starts with the analysis of the characteristics of parenting, and establishes a hierarchical relationship model of parenting. At the same time, it analyses the definition and connotation of each level of the model, instructing parents to recognize what resources they have in the process of upbringing and parenting, what resources can be used, and how to achieve the ideal goal of parenting and raising children. Avoid misunderstandings or detours.

Section 1: Characteristics of parenting

Five basic characteristics of Parenting:

• First: it’s a long-term process

Parenting process starts from when a mother is getting ready to be pregnant, to the beginning of pregnancy, and throughout the entire pregnancy, perinatal, neonatal, infancy, early childhood, childhood, adolescence, puberty, and even for a lifetime.

• Second: it is complex

Parenting is the application of a comprehensive science subjects. It includes the full application of hundreds of subjects such as humanities and society, natural sciences, all of kinds of social influences and application, and countless kinds of phenomena.

• Third: it requires planning

The planning of parenting begins from the time of pregnancy until the end of a child’s growth period. For example, preparations for nutrition, genetics, and prenatal education that parents begin to carry out during pregnancy; the medical and nutrition programs take place from newborns, throughout the early childhood, childhood, and adolescent; the preparation for getting the child ready to develop learning abilities, hobbies, and personality shaping programs and so on.

• Fourth: it is universal

Parenting is the obligation and social responsibility of every family. Regardless of how much the family can withstand, the basic upbringing of a child is in progress at all times.

• Fifth: it is always being influenced

Parenting is greatly influenced by the surrounding environment of parents, relatives, classmates, teachers, neighbors, friends, etc. At the same time, when the children encounter various people and things in society, some of the influences are positive, and some influences are negative. Some of the impacts are obvious, some are hidden, and the social environment affects the different aspects of what they see, hear, and think. Montessori also mentioned in The Absorbing Mind: The behavior of each individual is the product of the experience of its environment.

The above five basic characteristics tell us that Parenting is like a complex system engineering project. In the process of completing this project of Parenting, the family, school and society bear different responsibilities.

Parenting is especially important at every stage of the period before the child reaches the mature stage and formally becomes a contributor to the society, and it is a one-off opportunity. Faced with such a complicated situation and environment, many parents know that their own knowledge is insufficient, but do not know where to look for help, and therefore wasted their opportunity.

    To solve these problems, we must analyze the theoretical aspects, social influence aspects and different phenomena of Parenting and establishing a scientific and effective method for the division and classification of Patenting. This is absolutely necessary for the study of educational theory systems, the social practice of education as well as providing guidance for Parents. This is also the significance of the hierarchical relationship model theory of parenting.

Section 2: The hierarchical relationship model of Parenting

Generally speaking, every parent is full of beautiful expectations of their child's future. Every child is a unique piece of art. Create this piece of art, is the sculpturing process from the parents, schools, social institutions, and the environment we are living in. Whether the self-cultivation (not much intervention) and/or rational education (intervene when needed) are carried out in different children. After a few years or tens of years, the development of the child will present diversity: sometimes the already excellent ones perhaps are now even better, sometimes a excellent child becomes ordinary, and the ones not expected to excel are becoming outstanding. Why is this happening? The theory of Parenting is like the smoky ocean. Which one is the most practical? How to assemble and make full use of various forces to complete the upbringing of children? This is a very important issue that all parents face and ponder.

    First of all, let us take the parental participation as the central axis, take the children's different needs and parenting results as the level, the parent-child as the links, establish a hierarchical relation model of parenting levels, and then establish the associations of each parenting level and analyze them, with the hope of helping the parents to clear their confusion, find their specific position and methodology of parenting with the assistance of knowledge and science, thus avoid the regret of missing out the best and once off upbringing opportunity of their child. 

Section 3: The levels of the parenting model analysis

First level: Basic Parenting

Basic parenting level: When parents are preparing to have children, the most will conduct pre-pregnancy counseling (from medical institutions or elders or parents who have already had babies), and then they will go through pregnancy preparation, pregnancy management, giving birth, post-natal, baby care, Child care, preschool management and other processes. These are all the things parents need to do before the child starts to receive school education. We call this entire process the basic parenting level. The audience of this level covers all children, and this level has the largest base， this is the level at which all parents must participate, without exception, it is the basis for establishing the parenting relationship model.

The foundation of basic parenting is carried out under the guidance of many subdivided scientific theoretical knowledge and practical experience, and is the result of the comprehensive application of a large number of natural and social science theories and practical results.

In reality, as