Parenting Styles

Responsiveness

Responsiveness typically refers to the interactive synchrony between a caregiver and child. Responsive [Page 761]parents are able to read and respond to their children's needs with sensitivity and warmth. They are emotionally engaged with their child and consistently meet their child's needs. Responsive parents also value reciprocity and consider the child's wishes and needs. In this way, responsive parents make room for genuine exchange with their child. Being a responsive parent requires the ability to think flexibly, to problem-solve, and to adjust expectations in light of children's evolving needs and emerging personalities.

Although parental responsiveness is important across the span of childhood and adolescence, much of the research into parental responsiveness has focused on the relationships between mothers and their infants and toddlers.

Over time, sensitive care contributes to a child's development of secure attachment. For this reason, responsiveness toward children is essential, even in interactions with very young infants. In research into parenting of infants, responsiveness is operationalized by measuring features such as a mother's affection and skill when handling her baby; her sensitivity to the baby's crying and nonverbal signals; and her accessibility to, and consistency with, the baby. Additional measures of responsiveness investigate the degree to which a mother accepts the individuality of her child and how adaptable she appears in interactions with her child. As children mature and their needs change, parents need to learn to respond in new ways. Thus, researchers who study the relationship between parents and older children will operationalize responsive behaviors differently. Evidence suggests that mothers who are consistently responsive tend to experience greater harmony and cooperation in their interactions with young children, and these children tend to score high on measures of warmth and self-regulation.

Parents who are unable or unwilling to tune in to their child's needs may exhibit disengaged, inconsistent, neglectful, or even abusive parenting behaviors that are detrimental to the child's emotional, social, moral, and intellectual development. Jude Cassidy and colleagues have shown that children of rejecting, unavailable, or unresponsive parents are at increased risk for developing insecure attachment. For example, depressed mothers tend to score low on measures of responsiveness, heightening their children's risk of developing insecure attachment. Cassidy's research has demonstrated that when depressed mothers are separated briefly from their children, mother and child tend to avoid eye contact at reunion, and the child may even react with sadness and avoid the mother. Similar findings have linked maternal inconsistency to mother–child interactions characterized by low warmth and awkwardness.

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