In psychological and educational contexts, the term "parenting" is used, with a linguistic loan, to refer to the set of actions and behaviors with which parents, defined as parents, take care of their children, promoting their physical, emotional, social and intellectual development.
Within these contexts of study of parenting it has been specified that the "parental function", and the related willingness to provide care, include cognitive, emotional and relational skills that are not reduced to the attitudes or individual characteristics of the individual parent but to how they manage to meet the specific needs of each child.
Starting from numerous studies on the consequences of different styles and contexts of parenthood, it is now clear that to meet the needs of children requires a sufficient willingness to constantly renegotiate the parental role within the current balance of the parental couple.
On the basis of parenting skills, the so-called "parental suitability" is defined, which consists of four levels or areas of competence:
1) nurturing or nurturing caregiving, which includes responses to primary physical and dietary needs and is particularly important in the parents of infants and young children;
2) material caregiving, which includes support for the organization and structuring of the children's environment and physical world, which is relevant at an early age but which remains, in different ways, extremely important for the parents of both adolescents and young adults;
3) social caregiving, which contains the behaviors put in place by parents to stimulate the relational life of children, which support the development of emotional intelligence and require more activation in some moments of life than others where it is more useful to have a non-interfering presence;
4) did acting caregiving, which is a skill based on parental behaviors that encourage understanding of one's environment and support the development of problem solving skills.
Parenting functions
Through the use of care and education skills, differentiated according to the age and specific needs of children, parents or alternative caregivers perform multiple parenting functions, which are general and transversal objectives to support the balanced development of their children.
One of the first functions of parents involved in development is the protective function that includes all those behaviors with which they offer care in response to the needs of a child and, in particular, the need for physical protection and security. This function is carried out both through the physical presence, visible and observable by the child inside the house, and through the ability to make its own existence and participation in the life of the children feel, facilitating the interaction of the latter with their environment.
The physical and emotional closeness of the parental figures who perform the protective function generates feelings of security while, on the contrary, a threat of loss linked to an absence of this important function is able to produce anxiety. It is very important to truly love your child, only true love can give him a sense of security.
Parenting skills should be considered in relation to the needs that distinguish children in the different stages of development, but also in relation to their individual characteristics or the presence of particular psycho physical or family conditions (eg psychic disorders, physical diseases, emotional separations, environmental stress).
Among the most important individual characteristics, in order to be considered predisposed to take care of developing children and young people, are those described below. One of the first qualities at the basis of caregiver skills is altruism, that is, the individual disposition that manifests itself through the tendency to help other people in an active and disinterested way, a capacity that allows parents to be empathetic, open and to focus with involvement on the problems of their children.