Culture - Family Functioning - Wilms

“Culture is learned, not inherited. It derives from one’s social environment not from one’s genes”
Geert Hofstede[1]

School, Literacy, Employability and Children’s Behaviour "I have been given 28 Senior Kindergarten students who I dub "the class from hell". Every day consists of stealing, lying, hitting, throwing tantrums, throwing rocks, throwing up. I wake up at night having nightmares and get up in the mornings unrested and with butterflies in my stomach, worrying about going to work and facing these children. I am fearful for the adults they will become and the teenagers they will be in ten years. What is wrong with the world? "[2]

Conversations with many Kindergarten and Grade 1 teachers reveal that they are often the first witness of a growing wave of poor behaviour. Poor behaviour that inhibits children’s ability to learn at school. Teachers, and the school system as a whole, are finding it exceptionally difficult to shift behaviour and hence outcomes once the child is school age.

Research[3] backs up this anecdotal evidence.

“..approximately 212,000 children out of 900,000 in the 0-6 age group are at risk of not reaching their full potential when they enter the school system and are on a life course that could lead to learning, behaviour and health problems in later life. The majority of these children live in two parent, middle income families”

We are beginning to recognize that the battle for literacy, social cohesion and employability is best fought before a child enters school. The time of maximum opportunity is in the first 3 years. The optimal place is in the home.

What do we know now about home environments that will help us move upstream to where the root causes of learning problems occur?

Family Culture is the Driver for Behaviour and Hence Learning Outcomes
Until now, we have focused our limited resources available for supporting the Early Years on the poorest segment of families. We looked at the Socio Economic gradient as the best way of finding out where to focus our limited resources. We have made the assumption that poor learning outcomes are closely linked with poverty.

New research[4] suggests that how a family functions, or its “culture”, is more powerful than Socio Economic Status (SES) in affecting learning outcomes of children.

“These findings present a serious challenge to the “culture of poverty” thesis and the widespread belief that the children of poor families do not fare well because of the way that they are raised.

These findings show that positive parenting practices have important effects on childhood outcomes, but that both positive and negative parenting practices are found in rich and poor families alike. Thus good parenting is a concern for all parents………….

Because positive practices are only weakly associated with Socio Economic Status (SES), it is not feasible to identify parents with relatively poor skills on the basis of socioeconomic factors[5]”

Nor is family structure itself tightly coupled to learning outcomes:

“Parenting practices are not strongly related to SES or to family structure…both positive and negative practices are apparent in all types of families”

Willms’ team identify the three key family cultural groups as being:

“Authoritative” – Parents who establish a warm and nurturing relationship with their children but set firm limits for their behaviour

“Authoritarian” – Parents who are highly controlling, requiring their children to meet an absolute set of standards

“Permissive” – Parents who are overly nurturing and who provide few standards for behaviour and are extremely tolerant of misbehaviour.

The Willms research informs us that the poorest learning and development outcomes are found in families that have Authoritarian and Permissive cultures. The research team’s conclusion is:

“..Given that about a third of parents might be characterized as Authoritative, most parents could benefit from training programs that improved their skills. …The aim would be to provide parents with practical ways to monitor their children’s behaviour, engage with them positively and encourage their independence[6]”

We are beginning to understand that simply targeting the poorest of our society will not shift our total development deficit[7]. Wilms is making the point that the collective of family functioning, or culture, is a very productive place to look and work.

Geert Hofstede, the leading scientist looking at culture in the workplace reinforces this view:

“Every person carries within him or herself patterns of thinking; feeling; and potential acting which were learned throughout their lifetime. Much of it has been acquired in early childhood, because at that time a person is most susceptible to learning and assimilating. As soon as certain patterns of thinking; feeling and acting have established themselves within a person’s mind; (s)he must unlearn these before being able to learn something different; and unlearning is more difficult than learning for the first time. “[8]

If the close linkage is to be found in culture, how can we identify family culture and how can we affect family culture so that we can improve outcomes?

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[1] Cultures and Organizations – Software of the Mind – Intercultural Cooperation and its Importance for Survival. Geert Hofstede. McGraw Hill 1997

[2] A teacher in a private Kindergarten in Toronto – from a private email to the author October, 2002

[3] The Early years Study Three Years Later – McCain and Mustard August 2002

[4] Vulnerable Children– Findings from Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. – J Douglas Willms , Editor University of Alberta Press, Applied Research Branch HRDC 2002

[5] IBID Willms

[6] IBID

[7] “The greatest number of vulnerable children live in two parent, middle income families; targeting developmental resources to children living in poverty, although valuable, will have a relatively small impact on the overall population. Estimates suggest that if we could eliminate the negative impact of poverty, we would reduce the numbers of children who are vulnerable by 10%” Commenting on children in Ontario The Early Years Study – Three Years Later. McCain and Mustard August 2002

[8] Hofstede IBID

Comments

[Jeremy]

Prenatal -- very smart. Parents tend to be more receptive to help/advice/tips when they're maybe a bit afraid and know they're somewhat clueless (first-timers, anyway). That's where you could start the relationship and awareness...clever.

[robert paterson]

I don't see your comments as being negative - I am struggling to find a way that's all. Currently the team and i are thinking of making our bet on prenatal.

As a soldier we knew we could not train for war in action. The essence of good military trainig is to create experiences close to what you find in action so that you can build up situaional awareness - you can get through the stress and how tired and frightened you are and "see" what is really going on.

We are working on what we might be able to deliver experientially in prenatal classes to at first motivated parents that goes way beyond the act of delivery to what you need to know for the first year. I will be posting our session notes as we go.

PS thanks for the nice pointer to my old site where I have years of work lurking. It's my sketch book for ideas.

[Jeremy]

Great questions, Rob. All of them deserve my usual lame attempt at more questions...because answers are so much harder.
: )

1. Is there a hook for parents to learn stuff?

I know there are lots of parenting books sold, but don't you think most of them are bought by the most-motivated minority of parents who are reflecting about these issues already? I wonder if it's preaching to the converted, since the people who would benefit most are the least likely to seek out the information (regardless of the chosen media).

2. What if this information was available in books, websites and locally in person - especially from other parents?

I wrote in my last response that I thought parents are often loathe to ask for help with something we all assume should be instinctual, even though it certainly doesn't feel like it when you're struggling.

Maybe I'm wrong, though. Things would have to get very, very bad before I'd go outside for parenting help/advice, particularly in my town, where there's a still a stigma about needing help of any kind. That said, I'm certainly enjoying the process of following your initiative, but it feels more like an area of study rather than a self-help project.

But these objections are too negative, I realize. As I wrote here this week, I admire your ability and willingness to see past the barriers and obstacles that confine my sense of opportunity. This is a worthwhile project, if only for the process at first.

[robert paterson]

Good points Jeremy. I think that government would be terrible at this.

It's not how I see things unfolding - if I can have any influence anyway. I would like to keep government out of this operationally and to work not to institutionalize the work. The researchers will have to fit in as best they can.

1. Is there a hook for parents to learn stuff? Well we all buy a lot of books about parenting. We all want our kids to do well. Would the knowledge that if you talked and responded a lot with your kids and that you held them a lot in the first year be a difficult lesson? Would the knowledge that if you did this, your kids would have a better chance of doing well in life be an incentive?

2. What if this information was available in books, websites and locally in person - especially from other parents?

3. What if you could choose to take the info or not entirely up to you? What if it worked like the Atkins diet? What then if word of mouth became powerful?

4. What if parents helped each other? What if like personal trainers, parent perosnal trainers emerged?

What do you think jeremy - how best can we use this knowledge to help us do better?

[Jeremy]

Rob, I've been out of the loop and missed this article. Fascinating stuff. It makes perfect sense that socioeconomic status shouldn't be considered to be the predictor of parenting success or risk.

Your parting question is full of potential and challenge. Right now I'm mostly seeing challenge. Please indulge me for a moment...

Even if you could get everyone in a region (let's use PEI as an example) to agree on some standard or measure of effective parenting, and then you could wave a magic wand (because that may be the only way to do it) to determine which parents didn't meet that standard, then what?

Parental training has always seemed like kind of a joke to me...not much better than teacher training, which is ridiculous in most cases. Even if the initiative came from parents (who are often loathe to ask for help with something we all assume should be instinctual, which it is clearly not), I would doubt the effectiveness of any training program within a reasonable provincial budget.

The alternative might be to assume that the government could do a better job at early-childhood education than most parents are doing. I've seen this idea floated recently, with administrators pushing to get mandatory schooling for kids as young as three. Given how badly the industrial education system works for the self-actualization of older children, I'd hate to see them wreck kids even younger.

Sorry about the negative tone, here. I realize that what you are talking about is potential. We all want to believe that everyone has the potential to succeed, but who's responsibility is it to try to make that happen...even if it were possible?