Learning and Development I

Esther Asensio Castillo

Group 71; A

Family Influences on Children's Peer Relationships:

Parents' Social Networks and Educational Attitudes

The text I have chosen is the one which talks about Family Influences on Childrens relationships.
It starts with a reality, which is saying that parents dont have the roles of their childrens friends
when they are at primary school (6-12 years) but they influence a lot. In my opinion it is true,
because parents arent with their children the 24 hours of the day, it means that children are at
the school many hours, so they choose the girls and boys they want to have near them. But at
the same time, this choosing is regulated depending on the behavior and the ideas the parents
have transmitted to them.
In the text is analyzed a study about the influences of parents social relationships on childrens.
And it is said that the number of parents leisure-time friendships is positive in their childrens
relationships. Meanwhile, for example, the authoritarian parents make their children to have
more problems and feel loneliness. I think it is totally true, as children learn a lot from their
parents, so if their parents are open and have a lot of social life in their free time, the children
know and see that it is cool and it is good for them. But if the parents are authoritarian and show
little social life to their children, they have more problems to communicate with the peers, etc.
So what had been research in this study was the relation between the parents social networks
with the childrens integration into peer relationships through the parental education and
support, in order to get it the authors took 109 mother-child-dyads and 98 father-child-dyads in
Berlin, Germany. Those children were studying second-to fifth-grade.
Once they obtained the data, two different relations were distinguish:

Direct relations between parents and childrens social integration:

The children whose parents have more relationships and social life have more peers out
of the school. It is said that the children observe their parents behavior and their
relationships, moreover their parents encourage them more to be more social and open
to the people they meet. The sum of those aspects make this children to have more
skills and more facilities to talk and go well with other people.
In my opinion, it is really true, as a children learn a lot of things about their parents and
the behavior is an important aspect. Usually what they see is also what they do.

Indirect relations:
I think this point is very interesting, as it is said in the text, the mothers who maintain
more peer relationships give to their children more leeway to do activities with their
friends. It means that the children will have more facilities to have friends and maintain
them. In my opinion it is also a reality, because having friends make you know that it is
very important for ones life, so everyone wants the best for their children and it makes
those kind of parents to let their children more free.

Finally, a model of interpretation is showed: on one said we have the family-oriented parents
who restrict their childrens relationships, because they want to involve them more in the family
and let apart the peers relationships. This situation makes the children to feel loneliness
because they have not good relationships with their peers. On the other side, parents who are
not oriented to the family relations, which want their children to have as a model the peer
relationships they have, it is the way to encourage them to have more friends. So this parents
are more interested on their childrens relations.

In my opinion, there isnt one parental style which is better than the other. Because in my
opinion is not good to restrict the children in any position, nor the family neither the peers. Both
parts are important for the development and the life of a person, each one give good and bad
things but all of them are essential.