A short explanation of the term

It's important to learn to recognize abuse and manipulation. There's a type of manipulation called gaslighting, a term that comes from a 1944 film called Gaslight,* starting Ingrid Bergman. It's about a woman who is manipulated by her husband into believing that she is going crazy.

We come to find out the husband is actually just using the marriage in order to find something valuable that belongs to her. She believes she's going crazy because what happened in those days was if you turned on a light in one room, it would dim all the other lights throughout the house (because there was only a certain amount of gas that could light the whole house).

​As a result, you would know someone else was in the house or in another room, turning on the light, if you saw the lights flicker. And so she noticed that the lights would flicker every night after her husband had gone away somewhere, (supposedly to see friends or whatnot). He was actually rifling through the attic but he convinces her that he is imagining what she is clearly seeing (the gaslight flicker). When in reality, she knows better, but she believes him anyway.

That’s what it means to gaslight somebody — to convince them to deny what they know to be true. Gaslighting from an abuser makes a victim doubt their own instincts and sense of reality.

* The 1944 film is the American version of the original 1940 British film, which in turn is based on the theatrical play. We reference and feature the 1944 film since it is more well-known among American audiences.

by Brooks Gibson, MEd

To be sure, there are some specific parental behaviors that can have a definite impact on children, such as disciplining them in anger or rage, spanking, or reading to them every day and teaching them the alphabet and basic math. But to evaluate the impact parents have on childrearing, we must examine the whole relationship parents have with their children across all events over time. How parents interact with their children, respond to their needs, impose expectations, guide and teach them from infancy through adolescence, is all inclusive in determining how parenting styles affect our children’s development. ​

It is important to distinguish between differences in the distribution and the correlates of parenting style in different subpopulations. Although in the United States authoritative parenting is most common among intact, middle-class families of European descent, the relationship between authoritativeness and child outcomes is quite similar across groups. 
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There are some exceptions to this general statement, however: (1)demandingness appears to be less critical to girls’ than to boys’ well-being (Weiss & Schwarz, 1996), but (2) authoritative parenting predicts good psychosocial outcomes and problem behaviors for adolescents in all ethnic groups studied (African-, Asian-, European-, and Hispanic Americans), but it is associated with academic performance only among European Americans and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic Americans (Steinberg, Dornbusch, & Brown, 1992; Steinberg, Darling, & Fletcher, 1995). Chao (1994) and others (Darling & Steinberg, 1993) have argued that observed ethnic differences in the association of parenting style with child outcomes may be due to differences in social context, parenting practices, or the cultural meaning of specific dimensions of parenting style. 

by Rev. Tres Adames, MDiv, BCPC