The relationship between parenting and poverty

According to Peter Townsend: Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or are at least widely encouraged or approved, in the societies to which they belong. [...] Room (1995), a specialist in European social policy, describes fi ve ways in which there have been changes of emphasis from poverty to social exclusion in research: n the move from the study of fi nancial indicators to that of multidimensional disadvantage n the move from a static to a dynamic analysis n the move from the individual household to the local neighbourhood n the move from a distributi. [...] discipline their children in a similar way), but that the meaning of these practices and the outcomes for the children may differ depending on the overall style of parenting in the family which provides the context for the discipline. [...] Research implications The dynamic and multidimensional nature of poverty and the complexity and contextuality of parenting make the relationship between parenting and poverty extremely diffi cult to study. [...] Topics should include: n parents who remain in poverty and those moving in and out of poverty n ‘pathways’ to particular child outcomes and identifying the chronological order in which risk factors impinge on parenting n comparisons between the parenting styles and practices of parents in poverty and of parents not in poverty, but facing other personal and environmental stresses or risk factors n.