Different Parenting Styles on Children

Researcher Diana Baumrind, help to identify and describe the four basic parenting styles; authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and uninvolved parents. Research studies have proven that parenting style has a massive impact on a child's psycho-social development. Parenting styles have different outcomes on a child’s social relationships, school performance, and self-esteem. Authoritarian parents lack emotional nurturing. Permissive parents lack structure, but are better at providing more emotional support.

Authoritative parenting is a combination of both authoritarian and permissive. Authoritative parents are better at setting ground rules and specific boundaries and sticking to them while also giving the child the emotional support they need. Uninvolved parenting is when children have parents that tend to neglect them. Uninvolved parents are so wrapped up in themselves and could care less about providing their child with emotional support or focusing on their child’s wants and needs. The authoritative parenting style is the most positive style for children.

Consequently, children who have parents that are permissive or uninvolved engage in more high risk criminal behaviors that have a lasting effect on into adulthood. Keywords: Parenting, authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, uninvolved, psycho-social development “No surprise that there are big differences in the ways we approach parenting - our culture, the situations in our lives, and even the way our parents raised us influence what we think is the right way to parent” (Ritter, 2011). Since the 1920's, health and psychology experts have wondered why children behave the way that they do.

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They developed an interest in a child’s behavior and the style of parenting used in the home. Diana Baumrind is a psychologist and expert in parenting adopted the four differing parenting styles. She was responsible for the idea that different parents have different parenting styles and have a different way of raising their children. Research has suggested cultural specifics sometimes play a part in parenting strategies in their relation to a child’s behavior problems. Socioeconomic statuses were also found to have an effect on child-rearing practices.

Social status can have a major effect on the parental-child relationship which can cause the parents to be a lot less nurturing. This research is to uncover the different parenting styles and the effect it has on a child’s educational, mental, and social development. “Parents are high on control but low on responsiveness. They emphasize rigid behavior standards, place a premium on obedience, and are emotionally distant and unresponsive” (Conger, Simons, Gordon, Leslie 2007). This style of parenting relates to authoritarian parents.

These parents attempt to mold their child into what they would like to see them grow up to be. Authoritarian parents try to control their child’s actions by enforcing strict rules, and boundaries. This is the parenting style that allows no room for error or change. These parents lack affection in their style of parenting and are a lot less nurturing. “Children with authoritarian parents tend to do less well in school, are typically less skilled than their peers and have lower self-esteem. Children can appear passive or highly aggressive. The children's wishes have not been listened to nor valued” (Baumrind, 1991).

These children lack the social skills needed for healthy relationships, however, they do very well when it comes to academics. Children of authoritarian parents have very good listening skills and are use to obeying rules and always having someone tell them what to do. They do this in order to avoid getting in to trouble. Authoritarian parenting is defined as punitive. Punitive parents tend to use physical punishment as a way of disciplining their child or children. Research has shown that parents who use physical punishment to discipline their children learned it from previous generations. Both theory and research suggest that harsh physical discipline is likely to undermine adolescent efforts to express autonomy and relatedness. Experiences of harsh discipline may lessen an adolescent’s sense of felt security in the family, and thus signal to the adolescent that relationships with parents are too fragile to survive an increase in autonomy” (Bender, Allen, McElhaney, Antonishak, Moore, Kelly, Davis, 2007). Children with punitive parents often suffer from depression, lower self-esteem, and lack social skills.

A problem with children that have authoritarian parents is that when a child is in need of guidance or needs help solving a problem, they often turn to someone that they can trust, feel loved, and accepted by. Authoritarian parents have such high standards for their children in order for them to be successful adults, but they fail to realize they are missing out on real opportunities to provide the guidance that their child needs the most. It is healthy to have high expectations and limits for children but it is unhealthy when the balance love and affection is not defined.

This is a balance that authoritarian parents need to find in order to successfully raise their child or children. Children with authoritarian parents tend to have more mischievous behaviors then their peers’. These children lie a lot and hide their behaviors for fear what their parents will say and do. They are afraid to be honest because of the consequences that can be given or have previously been given for their actions. Even if the child’s behavior is positive, and the parent does not agree that the child should be doing the active and that this is something that goes against what the parent has planned.

The child will begin to hide all their behaviors even if they could receive negative or positive feedback. Furthermore, these parents fail to realize that their children are lying to avoid always being punished and that they are helping their child develop a life full of deceitful behavior. Permissive parents are parents that seek more pleasure out of their children and are more open to letting their children to behave any way they would like. According to Baumrind, permissive parents "are more responsive than they are demanding.

They are nontraditional and lenient, do not require mature behavior, allow considerable self-regulation, and avoid confrontation" (Baumrind, 1991). “Research has also shown permissive parenting to be associated with negative outcomes such as school misconduct, substance abuse and low frustration tolerance” (Ang, 2005). Permissive parents have an uncontrollable love for their child but prefer to be more of the child’s friend than their parent. Permissive parents have a harder time when it comes to setting boundaries and struggle to carry out the consequences.

These parents have few rules to keep order in the home such as, table manners, chores, bedtimes, homework, mealtimes, and being responsible. Permissive parents tend to let their children have control over their own behavior and make their own decisions. Even though permissive parents are loving, their lack for setting boundaries causes their children to suffer from insecurities. Lack of boundaries can cause a child to become selfish. Children with permissive parents have a high level of self –esteem and develop better social skills; however they tend to have more problematic behavior.

These children lack motivation and interest in school because they are not held responsible for their actions. Children of permissive parents are self-centered and lack discipline. These children do not have many friends and lack good social skills. “Although authoritarian and permissive parenting styles appear to represent opposite ends of the parenting spectrum, neither style has been linked to positive outcomes,” (Bornstein, Bornstein, 2007). Children with permissive parents have a lot of insecurities because of the relationship that they have with their parents.

They feel that their parents could care less about them. After all, these children have the freedom to do whatever they want and their parents not pay them any attention, or give them the guidance that they need to have a successful life. Dismissive parenting; or neglectful parenting; are also known as the uninvolved parenting style. This parenting style is almost like permissive parenting. One difference between the two styles is; uninvolved parents could care less about their children. These parents “lack emotional involvement and do not provide proper supervision” to their child (Dubai, 2009).

Uninvolved parents provide for only their child’s basic needs such as, food, shelter, and clothing. One of the worse cases for these children is that some of these neglectful parents have major addictive behaviors which may leave the child to act as their own parent or guardian. A lot of these children lack the basic social and academic skills needed to have a successful life. They may even begin to become involved in criminal behaviors. These children do not attend school regularly which causes them to have poor academic records and a higher dropout rate.

These children are more subject to become victims of physical, mental, sexual and emotional abuse due lack of supervision from their parents. These children have been found to have lasting mental and physical health problems that can affect them on into adulthood. Dismissing a child’s feelings or needs by ignoring them or telling them to forget it or get over it can have tremendous effects on their development as they grow into adulthood. The child will learn how to hold back their emotions and will have trouble with expressing their emotions properly to the people around them.

Additionally, the child will develop problems establishing positive, healthy, and safe relationships. These children will even have trouble in school. Most times uninvolved parents try not to have any type of interaction with their child. These parents tend to keep themselves deeply involved in their work and any other activity they may feel is more important than their child. An uninvolved parent is a parenting style that can be learned from previous generations. Their parents may have also appeared to always be too busy to raise them, show them love, and affection, or give them positive influence for their life.

Finally, children of uninvolved or neglectful parents have been found to be rated at the lowest level of all domains in life; physical, social, educational, and cognitive. The most positive, loving, warmest, parenting style would be the authoritative parent. Authoritative parents are more open to disciplining their misbehaving child; however their punishments are not very strict. They are more involved in their child’s life than the uninvolved parents and are not as harsh as authoritarian parents. Baumrind stated authoritative parents "monitor and impart clear standards for their children’s conduct.

They are assertive, but not intrusive and restrictive. Their disciplinary methods are supportive, rather than punitive. They want their children to be assertive as well as socially responsible, and self-regulated as well as cooperative" (Baumrind, 1991). Research has shown that children who are raised by authoritative parents have higher self-esteem levels, rely more on themselves, and tend to listen more cooperatively to rules. With all of these positive influences in the child’s life they tend to be more successful in their academics and later on in life in their careers as adults. It was found that higher socioeconomic status parents are more like to display an authoritative parenting style, i. e. they are responsive to the needs of their children, and foster demands through bidirectional communication and the encouragement of independence” (Chng, no date).

Authoritative parents are firm, fair, and provide continuous discipline to help their child develop proper behavior skills. These parents actively listen and consider the child’s opinions and feelings about decisions. This parent can clearly explain their expectations to their children and encourage their child to do well in all of life’s domains; such s mental, social, physical and emotional. Authoritative parents find pleasure in the child’s accomplishments. The style of parenting used by authoritative parents tends to balance the differences between authoritarian and permissive parenting styles. For example, when a parent tried to get their child obey them, no matter how the child feels or what they think about it, there times when a parent needs to step back and allow their child to make their own mistakes and do things on their own without have the parent there to interfere.

In all, children that are raised by authoritative parents have more freedom to explore and be and find themselves, while receiving the love, affection, and support that they need to have a successful while have certain boundaries that have been set by their parent. Parenting styles can determine how a child will develop in the major areas of their life. After researching and learning the major impact that the four parenting styles have on a child’s development it has been shown that the authoritative parenting style has the most productive and positive effects on children.

Authoritative parents instill proper amount of love, encouragement, and nourishment, while also setting the right amount of boundaries for their child. We can also evaluate that the “lack of parental involvement, poor monitoring and supervision, and harsh and inconsistent discipline, have all been established as strong predictors of antisocial outcomes in children and adolescents” (Dadds, Hawes, 2006). Authoritative parenting style can be a hard style to develop and achieve, because of culture, family size, generational background, economic status, educational level, religion and even different personalities between the parent and child. Child temperament may elicit certain parenting styles just as parenting styles may affect the relations between child temperament and behavior. It is possible that early levels of behavior problems influence parenting styles and behavior in middle childhood, which in turn influence later behavior problems” (Williams, Degnan, Perez-Edgar, Henderson, Rubin, Pine, Steinberg, Fox, 2009). It is important for parents to find a healthy parenting style that will positively produce a healthy, loving, happy child.

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