What is the goodness-of-fit model? Explain the relationship between temperament and child rearing

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Thomas and Chess proposed a goodness-of-fit model to describe how temperament and environment together can produce favorable outcomes. If a child's disposition interferes with learning or getting along with others, adults must gently but consistently counteract the child's maladaptive style. Goodness of fit involves creating child-rearing environments that recognize each child's temperament while encouraging more adaptive functioning. Difficult children (who withdraw from new experiences and react negatively and intensely) frequently experience parenting that fits poorly with their dispositions, putting them at high risk for later adjustment problems. By the second year, their parents tend to resort to angry, punitive discipline, which undermines the development of effortful control. As the child reacts with defiance and disobedience, parents become increasingly stressed. As a result, they continue their coercive tactics and also discipline inconsistently, at times rewarding the child's noncompliance by giving in to it. These practices sustain and even increase the child's irritable, conflict-ridden style. In contrast, when parents are positive and sensitive, which helps babies regulate emotion, difficultness declines by age 2 or 3. In toddlerhood and childhood, parental sensitivity, support, clear expectations, and limits foster effortful control, also reducing the likelihood that difficultness will persist. Recent evidence indicates that temperamentally difficult children function much worse than other children when exposed to inept parenting, yet benefit most from good parenting.