UC San Diego

The impetus for this study is derived from the researcher's experience as a teacher and parent educator. In such contexts, parents frequently lament about the difficulties they experience in developing and sustaining "best practices" in raising their children, and the intransigent nature of existing habits. Much schematic cognition about issues such as relationships involved in parenting resides beneath conscious awareness, and is activated through automatic or habitual interpretations and behaviors. This study examines the nature of a group of mothers' (N=14) schemas about parenting and the effects of these schemas on parenting practice. Four research questions guide this work : (1) what are the multiple parenting schemas that guide parenting practice? How are they expressed (articulated and enacted)? (2) How does the expression of parenting schemas vary across development in interactions with children at 6 years of age, as compared with 10 year-olds? (3) How do parents balance and reconcile multiple parenting schemas in everyday parenting, and how is the balance of these schemas related to consistency in parenting practice? (4) To what degree is it possible to use this study's methodology to define and understand multiple schemas? To answer these questions, the subjects participated in recording their responses to interactions with their children in solicited daily diaries and engaged in two interviews. Interview transcripts were coded for examples of schematic cognitions that included attributional style, efficacy cognitions, cultural models and conceptual metaphors. The data revealed detailed examples of schematic cognitions related to parenting. A key finding was a differing influence of schematic cognitions on emotion activation and cognitive distortions about parenting practice and child outcomes. Findings from this study inform parent education contexts, as well as development opportunities for teachers or other adults working with children and provide insight into how schematic interpretations are expressed both in language and parenting practice