Raising an authentic child in an unauthentic world

Parents usually have the best intentions – like protecting their children from life's hardships and preparing them for adulthood. However as with many other aspects of parenting, the results do not always match the intentions. Overprotective parents generally want to protect their children from harm, hurt, pain, failure, unhappiness, bad experiences, rejection, and disappointment (Lindsey 1). However, parents must realize that overprotective parenting has certain side effects. Parents believe that they are doing a favor for their children by keeping them safe without realizing that this parenting style can have severe effects on children such as robbing children of the essential life skills that they need in order to have a healthy

As we all know mother does know best, yet in some cases mother can do more harm than good. There is a big debate on how people are raising the newest generations and whether or not they are properly being introduced into the realities of our society. Are children being spoiled too much or not enough? This topic is thoroughly discussed by Alfie Kohn in his essay, “ The One-sided Culture War against Children” and by Nick Gillespie within his essay, “The Current State of Childhood: Is “Helicopter Parenting” or “Free-Range Childhood” Better for Kids?”. Although Kohn offers valid explanations, Gillespie does surpass Kohn’s explanations; parents need to be less overbearing and stop pampering their children.

Children need structure, guidance, and discipline. Keeping a close eye on one’s children will alert a parent as to when something is going wrong. Children are what they live, so teaching parent’s how to be good parent’s is not only going to benefit the parents but the children as well, instead of having monster heredity, them may have wonderful heredity genes for generations to

Children do not come with guidelines or instructions. What they do come with is a crucial set of physical and emotional needs that need to be met. To raise children properly, parents duties are not limited to just food, shelter and protection. Parents are largely responsible for their children’s success in life. Parents are required to teach and educate children. They have to shape knowledge and character into their children to prepare them to face the real world. To be successful with this, parents must provide self esteem needs, teach moral and values and provide discipline that is both effective and appropriate. As the generations have changed, many parenting styles have evolved, as well.

From infancy to adult, people are making decisions all day long. How long to study for the upcoming test? What sport to play? What college to attend? As choices are made, often goals are set to ensure maximum potential is achieved. This process of decision-making and goal setting is overbearing shadowed by the authoritarian style of parenting.

Parents have a significant amount of influence on how their children will act, behave and do certain things in today's world which base off of their skills. Not all parents will acquire impressive parenting skills and be able to raise their children properly in society. In a memoir called The Glass Castle, by author Jeannette Walls shares her life story and how it may be perceived as normal. In Jeannette’s life, she along with her siblings are raised by a father and a mother who raises their family in a way that society would view as unusual or problematic. Parents are the adults who have certain ways and skills on how their children are raised in which could be considered a problem, society, on the other hand, has certain views but isn’t necessarily the problem.

There are many different types of parents with diverse parenting styles in the world. Some are efficient in their ways, while others struggle to wonder why their child did not turn out to be everything they hoped. The controversial topic of whether the parent knows what is best for their child hangs over the reader’s head in Amy Chua’s article.

Children need guidance to become successful in life. One exceptional man wrote about the wrong type of parenting that causes children to be unproductive. In this article, he talks about how these styles can ruin a child’s life, because they are not being taught to be survive everyday life. Throughout this piece, the audience begins to understand his argument, because he uses many examples and rhetorical questions to persuade the readers. During the reading, he also brings up that severe parents are overprotective, since they think they are helping their children become wise, but they are actually afraid of teaching them about the necessities of the world. Furthermore, he supports his idea by saying things such as the wrong type of parenting

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 is one of the greatest honors, commitments, and trials a person will go through. It will test resolve, health, and even sanity but it can also provide the greatest sense of love and accomplishment in a person’s life. Whether a parent’s style is strict, laissez-faire, or somewhere in between, the choices made by parents for their children will leave their marks on the character and development of their children long into their lives. Amy Chua knew this. She also knew how dangerous it would be to her children’s future to raise them in a style that would leave them open to falling short of the opportunities they would start with due to her own, and her parents’, successes and she resolved not to allow this to happen on her watch

In the American culture today, we as a nation display an assortment of different parenting types that can affect the relationship between the parent and child. As displayed in Dr. Short’s lecture, the major parenting types would be, authoritarian, permissive, authoritatian, neglectful, and indulgent (parallel to permissive) (Short, 2016). According to research, such as the “Characteristics of Baumrind’s Parenting Styles” the authoritatian parenting style is shown to be the style in which there is mutual respect, decent communication, and realistic expectations regarding maturity (Short, 2016). It has been explained within the lecture that parents need to be the responsible guide for their child, which also includes the aspect of discipline.

The belief that the family structure and parenting practices have morally declined can be traced back to the early 1940’s in America. In an interview with C. Moran, LCSW-C (personal communication, April 8, 2004), she described a time where families lived very close to, if not on the same street as their extended family. Aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents would all participate in the raising of the children, “it takes a village to raise a child” (C Moran, April 8, 2004). In some cases, the grandparents would teach the parents how to parent. As time moved on into the “freeness” of the 1960’s and 1970’s, parenting became more passive. Children at a young age were allowed to make decisions that ten years ago would have been made by their parents. The belief was to allow the child to make their own mistakes and they would receive the repercussions from society. As a result, more freedom of choice would be given to the child. Now, with the children of the sixties and seventies having offspring of their own, the “millennial generation”, and extended families spread out globally, active and involved parenting is becoming a thing of the past.

Children are the future of the world and need to be nurtured and educated in the best conditions. Thus, parenting is one of the most challenging and admirable responsibilities that people can experience. Parenting plays important roles in the development of children’s characteristics. Some people nurture children depending on their own ways. Others get advice from friends or books. Parenting can be divided into three groups: authoritative, permissive, and democratic parenting.

As they grow up, it is common for the parent to enroll their child in extracurricular activities such as karate, music classes, sports, book clubs, etc. Research has acknowledged that the first child is the one that parents have the most expectations for. In this case, there is only one child. Therefore, the parents will go through high-pressure parenting. “Parent pressure is when a parent puts too much strain on their child to force them to exceed” (My Baby & Me). This puts the child under a great deal of anxiety when it comes to growing up. There is already a level of excellence that is drawn out for them to maintain. Some parents are successful with this method, and then some aren’t. There is no such thing as a perfect parent in this world, but there are some parents that are better than others and some that are just average parents. All parents have different methods when it comes to raising their children. Some are strict, or understanding and caring, or neglectful. Parents are categorized by the way they raise their children. This is called parenting style. Diana Baumrind identified four distinctive parenting styles, Authoritarian, Authoritative, Permissive, and Uninvolved. Michael Popkin (1987) found that the greatest control parents have over children is their style of parenting; this factor could significantly influence a child’s destiny, the way a child turns out to be in the future (p. 35). Authoritarian

“Baumrind (1967, 1971) identified three main styles of parenting”, explains Swartz, de la Rey, Duncan and Townsend (2011:65). The three main styles of parenting are authoritarian parenting, authoritative parenting and permissive parenting. Furthermore, each one of these parenting styles is associated with certain outcomes based on the behaviour of the child, the type of relationship that the child has with the parent and even the child’s self-esteem. However, according to a psychological expert Cherry (2015) “developmental psychologists have long been interested in how parents impact child development”. In brief, this might mean that, parents’ actions and behaviour have a huge impact on their child, which may cause the child to adopt the behaviour and make it a habit as they grow to be parents. So, as a parent you should always keep in mind that “your kids watch you for a living. It’s their job, it’s what they do. That’s why it’s so important to try your best to be a good role model”, declares Lehman (n.d.). I will now discuss the authoritarian