ABSTRACT
This chapter explains about the contributions of parenting to children’s developing self-regulation. It considers parenting in relation to self-regulation in the broader sense of exerting self-control and using strategies that help individuals to meet environmental demands, but also in the more limited motivational sense of autonomously or volitionally regulating one’s behaviour The chapter describes Self-Determination Theory as a framework for understanding how behaviors move from being motivated by external contingencies to being more autonomously regulated. It reviews studies on parenting that have been found to facilitate and undermine children’s self-regulation in the areas of behavior regulation, internalized self-regulation in younger and older children, and emotion regulation. The chapter deals with ideas for some areas that need attention to further our understanding of how parenting facilitates self-regulation, delineating the contributions of mothers and fathers; and considering how culture, ethnicity, and socioeconomic circumstances might shape the role of parents as facilitators of self-regulation.
