Parenting Styles And Their Effects On Children

An individual’s life and success is most dependent on their family environment and how they were raised. Good parenting is essential for a child’s educational and behavioral success and is a stressed trait throughout the world; however, in different cultures, good parenting can be defined and measured in many contrasting ways. In the United States, parenting and discipline methods have become controversial in the past fifty years, and the methods for raising children have drastically changed in some households.

Parenting styles have been described as the collection of parents’ behaviors which create an atmosphere of parent-child interaction across situation (Mize and Petit, 1997). Darling and Steinberg (1993) defined parenting style as “a constellation of attitudes toward the child that are communicated to the child and that, taken together, create an emotional climate in which the parents’ behaviors have expressed.” Despite these challenges, researchers have uncovered convincing links between parenting styles and the effects these styles have on children. There are different styles of parenting: authoritative, authoritarian and permissive.

The four primary parenting styles are Authoritarian, Permissive, Authoritative, and Uninvolved parenting styles. Authoritarian parents are very controlling and strict with their children. They expect obedience form their children and don’t tolerate expressions of disagreement. In contrast, Permissive parents are more relaxed and provide inconsistent feedback. They require little of their children and don’t see themselves as responsible for their children’s behavior. They also don’t set limits or control over their children. Authoritative parents are firm and set clear and consistent limits for their children. While they tend to be strict they show love and emotional support for them as well. These parents tend to reason with their child as to why they should behave a certain way. These parenting styles also encourage the child to be independent. The fourth parenting style is uninvolved parenting style. These parents show interest in their children and display indifferent or rejecting behavior towards them. They detach emotionally and only see themselves as providers of materials goods such as shelter, food, and clothing.

In this day in age there are various approaches to raising children. Each parent(s) must decide for them selves which style best fits their beliefs and abilities. Many parents come to the conclusion that they will try their best and just hope that their children learn right from wrong and the abilities they need to succeed in life. However, what most parents do not always realize is that the style of parenting they are using may have a bigger impact on their child than they are aware of. For the sake of these parents and their sanity, as well as the children’s, I have classified these styles of parenting into categories.

The permissive parenting style is one in which the parents care for their child, yet they don’t set rules or discipline their child. This parenting style is high in nurturance and low in maturity demands, control, and communication. According to Joseph Sclafani, a child psychologist,:

Research in parenting styles has found a large amount of correlation between parenting behavior and certain long-term outcomes for children. Specifically, parenting styles have been shown to correlate to a child’s obedience level, school competence, delinquency, violence, sexual activity, antisocial behavior, alcohol and substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and self-perception. The members of your family are the most prevalent relationships you will have in your life. Therefore, they will have the most influence in your future behavior. This paper examines the similarities and differences among authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and neglecting parenting styles and the effects on a child’s development and the resulting adolescent’s behavior.

Webster’s dictionary defines parenting as the process of raising and educating a child from birth until adulthood. As someone who parented four biological children, and earned the title of grandma, I can offer a lot of personal insight into the subject of parenting, and my first pearl of wisdom is that parenting is harder than one would think. Children do not come with an operation manual and it usually only takes new parents only a few days before they realize how blissfully delusional they were. Naturally, well meaning parents who understand the implications of their influence on shaping their child into happy, healthy, and successful adults, are naturally humbled with the awesome responsibility, and seek to develop a parenting strategy with positive empirical results.

There are several parenting styles which guide children throughout their life. These parenting styles can be either good or bad and this will have an effect on the child; either a positive or a negative one. This essay investigates the parenting styles from which emerge questions about the role of the mother and the father. It also focuses on the ways that either too much mothering or too much fathering might have an effect on the child’s identity later on in its life.

Parenting styles play an powerful role in the development of a child. Research has revealed the parenting styles can influence a child's social, cognitive, and psychological growth which affects children both in the childhood years, and as an adult. This is because children develop through the environment by surround them. The fact that parents are usually always around the child will influence him/her either negatively or positively. Parenting styles, and the culture in which a child grows up plays an important role in their physical, and emotional development.

Parenting styles can be highly impressionable on their children. There are various styles of parenting, and each style can have different effects on the child or adolescent. The four parenting styles that can be implemented in the household are recognized as: authoritarian, neglectful, permissive, and authoritative. All four of these styles carry their own unique characteristics, and have some distinct features. Whichever style a parent decides is best to use for their child can have multiple short and long-term effects, so it is best to look at each style and find the one that works best. 

O’Byrne, Haddock, Poston, and Mid America Heart Institute (2002) investigated whether parenting style was a risk factor of smoking initiation and experimentation among adolescents and whether there was a relationship between parenting style and readiness to quit, and nicotine dependence among smokers. O’Byrne et al. (2002) defined current smokers as those who smoke regularly, experimenters as individuals who have smoked on one or two occasions, but have not smoked in the past month. Initiated smokers were considered both current smokers and individuals who smoked regularly in the past and then quit. Readiness to quit was categorized into four stages: precontemplation, for those who had no intent on quitting, contemplation, for those who may quit but not within the next 6 months, preparation, for those who will quit within the next 6 months and action, for those who will quit next month. Parenting style was measure by the Family of Origin Scale (FOS) which measured family intimacy and autonomy. This scale

In my recent psychology class we studied parenting styles. They are grouped into three different categories; authoritarian, authoritative, and overly permissive. This gave me insight into a couple of different programs I’ve watched on television.Authoritarian parents are parents that set strict rules to keep order and they usually do this without much expression of warmth and affection. “They demand obedience to authority.” (Coon & Mitterer, 2010, p. 91) When the child questions the parent, "Because I said so," is often the response. Parents tend to focus on bad behavior, and not positive behavior, and children are scolded or punished for not after the rules. Authoritative parents help their children learn to be responsible for

The way that parents raise their children and react to different situations can significantly affect a child’s development. Parents can be classified into three different areas regarding their parenting style: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. Authoritarian parents (parent-centered) are those who are classified as strict parents that are demanding and expect their children to follow their rules strictly. They also value obedience and believe that their child should follow their rules without any question (Berns, 2016). In contrast, authoritative parents (democratic) have high expectations, but are supportive/flexible and try to direct their children’s behavior in a give-or-take way (Berns, 2016). Permissive parents (child-centered),

The family system and parents are generally regarded as one of the most powerful forces in shaping adolescents. Parents have a great influence in the development of adolescents. The relationship of the parents largely effect the development of adolescents and is an important factor when looking at development. Well-adjusted adolescents tend to have intact families that are supportive and create a warm and loving environment with constant monitoring of behavior. The review examines the current research on adolescent development and how it is effected by parenting styles. Taking into account the changes that occur over time to parents this review shows the fluidity of parenting styles and the stressors that cause those changes.

In this paper, I will examine how parenting style affects an individuals relationship with his or her children. According to Baumrind, there are four main parenting styles, differentiated on levels of support and expectations. This paper focuses on parents with high support and high expectations,who are known as authoritative parents and those who are supportive with low expectations, who are are permissive. These four different styles of parenting lead to very different developmental outcomes for children in social, academic and emotional domains. However, this model does not fully explain parent-child interactions because it neglects to reference the environmental context of the relationship along with any personal differences in temperament of the child. This context introduces complexity such as personality differences, age of child and marital status of the parents. This is an important topic to investigate because of the impact parenting style can have on developmental outcomes for both the immediate child and for future generations.