Parenting style and creative potential of children

Creativity is an essential quality for personal and global socio-economic growth as rapid technological advancements and increasing competitiveness require the ability to think and produce creatively (^{LUBART; BESANÇON; BARBOT, 2019}; ^{PUGSLEY; ACAR, 2018}). The acquisition of skills related to creativity such as open mindlessness, persistence and mental flexibility, risk taking and curiosity contribute to individual and global well-being both in the present and for generations to come.

Four-C Model of Creativity

Creativity corresponds to the ability to produce new content adapted within its context. Rather than producing strange or off-topic ideas, creativity promotes originality with meaning and value in their context of production (^{LUBART; BESANÇON; BARBOT, 2019}). Creativity manifests itself at four levels of achievement. At the personal level, mini-c creativity appears at the individual level when someone discovers something new and meaningful to themselves but not necessarily valued or recognized by others. Little-c creativity expands mini-creativity at the personal level through feedback and appreciation from others such as friends and family. The Pro-c level offers originality recognized by colleagues and associates in a professional environment such as the literary or scientific world. The fourth level, Big C creativity achieves eminence within a field through significant contributions recognized worldwide over time (^{KAUFMAN; BEGHETTO, 2009}).

Multivariate Model of Creative Potential

Creativity guides the evolution of humankind. Since prehistoric times, our ancestors invented hunting tools, then improved them, an adaptation for their needs within their environment. The murals found in caves, such as those in Lascaux France illustrates how individuals achieved innovation within the sphere of visual communication (^{LUBART et al., 2015}). According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (^{ANANIADOU; CLARO, 2009}), children need to master a set of cognitive, social and emotional skills that enhance communication, cooperation, critical thinking and creativity in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Creative potential indicates what an individual can do when considering the implications of the environment, life experiences, and one’s cognitive and emotional development. Creative potential can change and develop over time, and it is not necessarily a general creative capacity. For example, high potential within a scientific domain may not indicate high potential within another domain such as music. An individual’s potential to create depends on the availability and accessibility to variables that, when combined contribute to the development of the creative process (^{LUBART; BESANÇON; BARBOT, 2019}). This combination of components depicts the main principle underlying the Multivariate Model of Creative Potential (see Figure 1).

SOURCE: Dechaume and Lubart. The figure is adapted from the original: ^{Lubart et al. (2015}).

FIGURE 1 — MULTIVARIATE MODEL OF CREATIVE POTENTIAL 

In the Multivariate Model of Creative Potential, cognitive factors refer both to general and specific domain knowledge and intellectual capacity such as mental flexibility and associative capacity. Conative factors include personality traits such as risk-taking and motivation. Affective factors relate to personal emotional qualities, and environmental factors consider the physical and social context surrounding the individual (e.g., school, community, family, culture). These components contribute to the potential for creativity and are engaged in the process through which a creative product may or may not be produced.

Creative potential is a latent capacity used during engagement with a task. A person who does not engage with a task will not be able to show or utilize their potential, and consequently, creative productivity within the task. Task engagement then relates to motivation as well as environmental factors that promote task engagement. For example, athletic potential to play rugby relates to the environmental conditions of physical stature and access to rugby training. Task engagement then becomes possible as a child grows physically and gains access to rugby practices. Otherwise, a child’s athletic potential as a rugby player may remain latent and unexploited (^{BESANÇON; LUBART, 2015}; ^{STERNBERG; LUBART, 1995}).

Measuring Creative Potential

Evaluating creative potential can occur either by measuring individual components or within a scenario-based evaluation testing environment under explicit demands (^{BESANÇON; LUBART, 2015}). The componential evaluation approach considers generalized, domain-specific and task-specific abilities by measuring individual differences. Componential measurement includes cognition indicated through level of mental flexibility, conation with personality traits such as openness to new ideas, and motivational factors found on scales and questionnaires. The scenario-based approach measures potential rather than an actual effective accomplishment because the situation occurs within a test environment instead of within a naturally occurring event. Scenario-based evaluation measures production capacity when individuals encounter a domain-specific creative task (e.g., artistic, writing, musical) in two distinct phases, divergent-exploration and convergent-integrative.

In the divergent-exploratory thinking phase, a dynamic movement occurs among various elements in order to explore reflectively. In the divergent-explorative phase, an individual transcends boundaries of a particular problem or task and searches for new directions. This phase engages mental flexibility, openness, persistence, curiosity, and motivation as the individual explores the given task. An individual’s existing knowledge base, skills to investigate, and environment support cognitive functions in the divergent-exploration phase. The convergent-integration phase features assimilation, grouping, and selective treatment of the elements collected during the divergent-explorative phase. The selective process leads to elaboration of a single idea or solution through convergence and integration (^{BESANÇON; LUBART, 2015}).

Effect of family environment

Creative productivity requires environment support (^{DENG; WANG; ZHAO, 2016}). Familial-based relationships provide the cognitive and affective basis as children develop their creative capacity. Parenting style defines the family environment and essentially refers to daily child-rearing practices, attitudes, perceptions, and interactive behaviors between parents and their children (^{JANKOWSKA; KARWOWSKI, 2019}). Parenting style helps develop creative potential of children by shaping their understanding of their surroundings and by their ability to construct mindset, personal qualities, traits, and skills (^{CROPLEY, 1967}; ^{RUNCO; JOHNSON, 2002}).

^{Lautrey (1980}) described two elements that, when present in the family environment, contribute to the intellectual development of children. First, disturbances in daily life impact assimilation of knowledge, and second, a state of re-equilibrium provides an eventual construction of new knowledge. Specifically, Lautrey described the family environment as a source of disturbance that resists the Piagetian assimilation scheme as a necessary condition for re-equilibrium, and therefore, eventual construction of knowledge. Lautrey found these disruptive processes evident in both the general physical world and daily family functioning with rules of behaviors and habits that evoked a sense of regularity in both environments. This regularity allowed children to see the results of their actions from both the daily family environment, random events similarly to those occurring within the general physical world.

^{Lautrey (1980}) described three different types of family environments based on a continuum of rigidity. At the lowest end of the rigidity continuum, disruptive events fail to be regulated, structured, and assimilated. Children are in a constant state of disequilibrium and therefore, may experience less cognitive construction.

At the other end of the continuum, children experienced more predictable family environments. Relationships between events seemed simple, regular, and known. Although predictable and structured environments provided regularity as a necessary condition for cognitive construction, they did not permit many situations that stimulated a state of disequilibrium. Therefore, possibilities of cognitive constructions occurred on a limited, restrictive basis. More recently, researchers founded an authoritarian parenting style linked with a tendency to value compliance traits and they found that a more restrictive familial environment negatively predicted creative development in children (^{FEARON; COPELAND; SAXON, 2013}; ^{TENNET; BERTHELSEN, 1997}).

^{Lautrey (1980}) identified a third familial environment situated between the low rigidity and high end of the continuum. In this environment assimilation was not guaranteed because events were not always regulated in the same way. In this midpoint environment, between low rigid and high rigid environment, an individual entered a state of disequilibrium when they failed to relate two previously integrated events. A new mediating event was necessary for re-assimilation, and eventual cognitive construction. These constructions occurred through an extension, expansion, or elaboration of the initial scheme.

Purpose of the present study

Broadly, this preliminary study explored the relationship between parenting style and the creative potential of children. We examined three constructs: daily child-rearing behaviors, creativity-specific parent-child interactions, and parental perceptions of their child’s creative self-efficacy. We perceive these constructs as important contributing factors in what makes a family environment-creative. We evaluated the creative potential of children through four constructs of task accomplishment in two specific domains using divergent-exploratory and convergent-integrative cognition. Finally, we determined the relationship between each of the three parenting style constructs with the four constructs of creative potential of children.

Method

The study methodology examined the relationship between parenting style through a battery of three questionnaires and the creative potential of children through a series of tasks on the Evaluation of Potential Creative (EPoC) instrument. The three parenting style constructs were correlated with each of the four constructs measuring creative potential of children.

Results

Descriptive statistics of parental responses on all three questionnaires appear in Table 1. Similarly to ^{Lautrey’s work (1980}), we formed three rigidity level structure groups of participating parents. Out of a possible score response range of 20 to 60, parents were identified as either having rigid rules (29-36; N = 22), flexible rules (37-40; N = 21) or low rule (41-46; N = 15) in their home environment. The low reliability for this questionnaire in our study (α = .372) along with an 8-factor model explaining only 51% of the variance reflect the independent nature of most items within this questionnaire.

The measure of CCP-CRQ (^{KWASENIESKA et al., 2018}) of parent-child interaction in our study showed relatively high reliability (α = .706). The subscales of the CCP-CRQ provided more detailed information on the types and nature of creativity specific parent-child interactions. The range of the subscale’s reliabilities was between α = .735 (6 items-encouragement of non-conformism) to α = .801 (7 items-support of perseverance in creative efforts). In the third questionnaire measuring Parental Perceptions (^{KARWOWSKI et al., 2011}), parents rated children as more creative rather than less creative on their perceptions of their children’s creative self. The overall reliability of this questionnaire in our study was high (α = .804).

The EPoC assessment provided data to examine the relationship between children’s creative potential scores and their parent’s responses on each of the three self-reporting scores on the parenting style questionnaires. Table 2 presents the Pearson’s r correlation matrix used to examine these seven constructs.

We were unable to identify a relationship between EPoC scores and the three questionnaires comprising our parenting style battery. We found a significant correlation between the CCP-CRQ scale (^{KWASENIESKA et al., 2018}) and the Parental Perceptions scale (^{KARWOWSKI et al., 2011}) (r = .348, p < .01). Similarly, we found a significant correlation between the Parental Perceptions scale (^{KARWOWSKI et al., 2011}) and the CCP-CRQ (^{KWASENIESKA et al., 2018}) subscale of Encouragement to Experience Novelty and Variety (r = .270, p < .05). We found a significant negative correlation between the CCP-CRQ (^{KWASENIESKA et al., 2018}) subscale of Support of Perseverance in Creative Efforts subscale and Encouragement to Fantasize subscale (r = -.315, p < .05). The intercorrelations among the EPoC tasks, indicated that verbal and graphic domains were not totally disconnected and that scores could be linked. For example, in an integrative-graphic task, children could mix verbal and graphic creativity when explaining their graphic production.

Discussion

In this preliminary study, we explored three constructs of parenting style that may influence the creative potential of children. More specifically, we considered the effect of parental level of rigidity structure, explored the links between creativity specific parent-child interactions, and lastly, explored parental perceptions of their children’s’ creative self-efficacy. The conceptual basis for the parenting style component indicates how parents show their recognition and express their values to their children in a daily, repetitive manner. In doing so, they shape personal qualities and construct skills and traits which can either promote or inhibit creativity (^{KWASENIESKA et al., 2018}; ^{LAUTREY, 1980}). Our analysis did not find a statistically significant relationship between children’s performance on EPoC tasks and parental levels of rigidity assessments. This finding merits a closer evaluation of each item related to the daily practices and habits between parents and their children and a review of the parental rigidity structure construct within the framework of creativity in the home environment. Furthermore, it is of interest to evaluate the nature of the relationship between parenting style and creative potential. Specifically, can this relationship be described as nonlinear as opposed to a linear, causal relationship?

Scores on the CCP-CRQ questionnaire (^{KWASENIESKA et al., 2018}) did not correlate significantly with scores on the EPoC tasks. However, CCP-CRQ (^{KWASENIESKA et al., 2018}) scores did correlate significantly with Parental Perceptions (^{KARWOWSKI et al., 2011}) scores, and therefore indicated potential conceptual similarities between CCP-CRQ (KWASENIESKA et al., 2018) and Parental Perceptions (^{KARWOWSKI et al., 2011}) questionnaire. The findings indicated that parent-child interactions correlated significantly with parental perceptions thus supporting the notion that parental attitudes and interactive behaviors are significant predictors of children’s creative abilities (^{CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, 1996}; ^{GUTE et al., 2008}; KWASENIESKA et al., 2018). Of interest is the significant correlation between parental perception of children’s creative self-efficacy and interactions and behaviors relating to parental encouragement to experience novelty and variety. This result indicates that the more parents encourage novelty, the more they perceive that their children show creative behavior.

We found a significant negative correlation between the CCP-CRQ (^{KWASENIESKA et al., 2018}) subscale of Encouragement to Fantasize with that of the CCP-CRQ (^{KWASENIESKA et al., 2018}) subscale of Support of Perseverance in Creative Efforts. This correlation provided insight into the type of behaviors that may hinder a full engagement with creativity in the home environment. This may suggest that too much support for direct creativity can diminish children’s engagements in behaviors such as fantasy, or that fantasizing is too demanding within the context of daily life. Fantasizing demands certain creativity related traits such as autonomy, independence, and questioning of authority and socio-cultural values which are possibly more difficult to adopt on a daily basis than conformity and compliance (^{PUGSLEY; ACAR, 2018}).

Conclusion

Creativity corresponds to the ability to produce new content adapted within its context. Creative potential indicates what an individual can do when considering the implications of the environment, life experiences, and the person’s cognitive and emotional development. The components of the Multivariate Model of Creative Potential, contribute to the potential for creativity and are engaged in the process through which a creative output may or may not be produced. Creative productivity requires environmental support. Familial-based relationships provide the cognitive and affective basis as children develop their creative capacity by shaping their understanding of their surroundings and by their ability to construct mindset, personal qualities, traits, and skills. Broadly, this preliminary study explored the relationship between parenting style and the creative potential of children.

The correlations concerning parent-child interactions with parental perceptions do not allow a causal link to be determined. However, they suggest possible avenues for further research and educational practices to acknowledge and support novel, discovery activities. Beginning with the most essential, everyday life events, parents who engage in creative interactive behaviors, value qualities related to creative self-efficacy, and maintain these competencies support the creative potential of their children. Identifying constructs within parenting styles responsible for the development of creative potential enable us to accept and integrate those practices and behaviors, into our families, schools, and communities. By incorporating these behaviors at the family level, we will be able to acknowledge their essence and utility at a larger, social level.