Parenting styles play a key role in the growth and development of a child. This is a review of the journal article Selective impact of early parental responsivity on adolescent stress reactivity, by Hackman et al . (2013). In the article, Hackman et al. (2013, p. 1) state that parental care influences cognitive and socio-emotional aspects of the child even regarding reaction to stress. This effect is dominant throughout adolescence up to adulthood. In this paper, I will first give a summary of the article, then finally write my reaction to it. Parental responsivity at early childhood predicts a child’s cortisol response to stress.
According to Hackman et al. (2013, p. 3), actions that convey responsivity and friendliness foretell cortisol reactivity while reproving and negative reinforcement cannot. The friendly responses from parents include responding appropriately to a child’s concerns and spending much time being close with the child. Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, can result from disciplining the child by scolding, slapping and spanking, especially in the presence of peers and other people. Aspects of sex, drug abuse, age, tasks performed, and length of sleep are independent of parental responsivity Hackman (2013, p. 4) continue to state that a biased assessment of stressors cannot be used to explain the effects of parental responsivity on cortisol reactivity. While examining this parental effect, other extreme childhood experiences are kept constant. These include factors such as abandonment or abuse including exposure to various environmental risks. The aspect of parental responsivity on its own therefore can shape the cortisol reactivity of a child from early stages.
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There are instances when the cortisol reactivity is dampened. According to Hackman et al. (2013, p. 6), dampening is a forecaster of expressing behavior and poor decision-making functioning. A child at this point displays an increased cortisol reactivity to counteract a parent’s effort to moderate the aggressive behavior. In the research, it was concluded that minimum levels of parental responsivity result in blunted cortisol. A child copes with the stress effectively by utilizing an increased cortisol reaction. When there are no resources to mobilize to increase the cortisol, a blunted response results.
Enduring stress may lead an individual into socio-emotional challenges, due to the constant reduction of cortisol response. The theory of Biological Sensitivity to Context and the Adaptive Calibration Model of stress responsivity, help explain this relationship between parental responsivity and cortisol (Hackman, 2013, p. 6). When a child experiences high levels of support, augmentation, conflict, and adversity, it promotes natural reactivity to context. On the other hand, restrained support and stress encourage lesser levels of reactivity. This study revealed that high levels of parental responsivity might be interpreted as safeguarding the consequence of a temperately stressful, low-socio-economic status environment. High support in the context of a temperately stressful setting encourages reactivity to the setting as paralleled with temperate support in the context of temperate stress. These dissimilarities in the extent of support and risks encountered explain the difference in the effects on the cortisol reactivity of individuals.
In the study, Hackman et al. (2013, p.6) established that early life parental responsivity in animals was synonymous with that of human beings. An example is given of a rodent that models longer separations, and reduced motherly nurturing actions typically foretell improved reactivity, while short-lived separations and handlings that increase delicate, nurturing caregiving encourage diminished, but not blunted reactivity . Inconsistencies may also be experienced due to disparities in timing, duration, and extremity of exposure potential with investigational animal study and longitudinal observational human study. Variances between scopes of human child care such as kindliness and responsivity as related to control and self-control are hard to convert into animal behavior. Additionally, human studies have the constraint that essential characteristics of the environment, such as augmentation and irregularities, and social setting are interrelated with parental conduct. Some of these factors may have stress reactivity impacts on animals. The other main cause of inconsistency may be due to differing in stressors models used in studying both the animals and human beings.
My reaction to this article first focuses on the fact that most of the adolescent participants were from low socio-economic status families. There would have been a biased which hinders the generalization of the results. The researchers, however, performed exemplary tasks by comparing other aspects of stressors and parental responsivity to determine their impact on cortisol reactivity. The findings undoubtedly indicate that with all factors of early childhood kept constant, parental responsivity influences cortisol reactivity greatly. In my view, there are other stressors which may suppress the parental responsivity, especially when the child is at the adolescent stage and beyond. These factors may include peers and change of environment, due to schooling or marriage. Caregiving is a critical task that needs commitment to bring up a resilient generation that can mobilize resources adequately and conquer stress.
Reference
Hackman, D. A., Betancourt, L. M., Brodsky, N. L., Kobrin, L., Hurt, H., & Farah, M. J. (2013). Selective impact of early parental responsivity on adolescent stress reactivity. PloS one , 8 (3), e58250.
