Explain the relationship between temperament and child rearing in the goodness-of-fit model

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess proposed a goodness-of-fit model to explain how temperament and environment can together produce favorable outcomes. Goodness of fit involves creating child-rearing environments that recognize each child’s temperament while simultaneously encouraging more adaptive functioning. If a child’s disposition interferes with learning or getting along with others, adults must gently but consistently counteract the child’s maladaptive style. Difficult children, in particular, frequently experience parenting that fits poorly with their dispositions. 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 infants and toddlers 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 and lead to emotional and social difficulties.