Seminar Series

Over decades, parenting researchers have successfully conceptualized and empirically documented the various forms of caregiving along with their etiological roots and implications for child development outcomes.  However, much of this work has relied on top-down approaches that define and distinguish socialization and caregiving constructs based largely or solely on their physical form, and by extension, primarily categorizing parenting into ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ behavioral dichotomies. The result of this is a lack of precision or specificity in determinants and sequelae. As a field, we have still not successfully addressed limitations identified 20 years ago by Collins (2005): “Perhaps most important for future research, the present framework is a timely reminder of the importance of moving beyond global associations toward divergent predictions, thus avoiding the frequent, but only somewhat informative, conclusion that good things go together and bad things go together (p. 144).” Behavioral systems models can address this gap by more precisely identifying parental socialization goals and the behavioral strategies for achieving those goals within specific child-rearing contexts.  This talk will present how “form (what it looks like)” and “function (what it is designed to do)” in behavioral systems conceptualizations of caregiving can provide greater specificity in parenting behaviors with children. Moreover, the talk will discuss observational approaches to assessing different caregiving domains, mothers’ and fathers’ caregiving, and the pitfalls and promises of this approach.