Parenting styles are shaped by the diversity in families and their cultural backgrounds. The United States of America has seen significant change in its population due to immigration, which influences how children are reared. 2020 U.S. Census Bureau data shows that one-quarter of households are single-parent families, while three-quarters include married parents.
This reflects shifting patterns of race, ethnicity, and spiritual ideologies. Factors like social norms, values, and even language shape how parents guide their children’s behavior and encourage self-regulation.
Researchers have grouped parenting into four main categories: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved. Authoritarian parents focus on enforcing conduct, demanding compliance with strict rules, which often leads to issues with delayed gratification. Authoritative parents balance warmth and discipline, helping children develop self-regulation while teaching them the importance of limits.
Permissive parents, on the other hand, are more lenient, often focusing on what their child wants, while uninvolved parents offer little support or structure. These styles are often situation-dependent, influenced by socioeconomic status, spiritual ideologies, and individual circumstances.
A parent’s job is not only to manage behavior but to prepare children for the real world. This includes teaching kids about consequences, supporting them through mistakes, and helping them handle challenges like school, money, and relationships. When children scream, “I hate you!” or say things like “I don’t feel liked,” it’s a way of expressing frustration.
As Hannah L. Mulholland, LICSW, MSW, a pediatric social worker at Mayo Clinic, explains, supporting children through these emotions builds their capacity to navigate life’s challenges.
Without proper guidance, children could enter adulthood feeling unprepared, lacking the skills needed to solve problems and take care of themselves, from doing laundry to managing money and relationships, or keeping a clear head under stress.
The Psychology Behind Different Types of Parenting Styles
Deciding how to raise a child can be a major challenge for parents, often causing anxiety, especially when trying to align with a partner. The process of rearing kids involves choosing a parenting style to follow, which is not the same for every person. Researchers have identified four key categories of parenting. In the 1960s, psychologist Diana Baumrind described three: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive.
Later, in the 1980s, Stanford scholars Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin added the neglectful style. Each style, described in various books, offers insights into finding the most beneficial place for a family to foster healthy development.
4 Types of Parenting Styles
When it comes to parenting, there are four main styles that help shape how children grow and develop. These styles—authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and neglectful—each offer a unique approach to raising children.
Understanding these styles helps parents commit to the most effective approach based on their situation and the unique needs of their children. As Hannah L. Mulholland notes, doing their best and implementing the right style at the right moment can make a significant difference in a child’s growth and well-being.
- Authoritative Parenting Style
- Permissive Parenting Style
- Authoritarian Parenting Style
- Neglectful or Uninvolved Parenting Style
Authoritative Parenting Style
The authoritative parenting style is widely recognized for its beneficial effects on child development. This style is characterized by a close and nurturing relationship between parents and children, where guidelines and expectations are clearly communicated.
Authoritative parents set reasonable boundaries and provide input on disciplinary actions, using fair and firm consequences rather than being punitive. This approach balances structure and warmth, allowing children the freedom to express their opinions while maintaining standards for behavior.
Research by Diana Baumrind shows that authoritative parenting results in confident, responsible, and achievement-oriented children. These children often excel in school and exhibit high self-esteem and social skills. This style helps children develop self-regulation and manage emotions, contributing to their overall psychology and emotional health.
The authoritative approach avoids being restrictive or intrusive, making it effective in fostering cooperative behavior and curious minds. By offering a caring environment with tough yet fair rules, authoritative parents help their children navigate mistakes and freedom, promoting their development and potential in a balanced and supportive manner.
Example of Authoritative Parenting Style
An example of the authoritative parenting style is how parents manage mealtimes with their children. For instance, authoritative parents might involve their children in meal preparation, allowing them to choose a side dish like fruit for dinner. They set reasonable restrictions and model positive eating behaviors while explaining the reasons behind these choices.
Research shows that this style can lead to better diet quality and healthier eating habits. This approach helps children understand the importance of a balanced diet and promotes better eating behaviors throughout the week and night.
Effects of Authoritative Parenting
Authoritative parenting greatly influences children by fostering self-confidence and self-regulation. This parenting style promotes positive outcomes as it combines high expectations with a supportive and trusted relationship.
Authoritative parents are highly involved but also respect their child’s independence, encouraging them to make responsible decisions and evaluate risks and safety. This approach helps children develop strong self-esteem, manage emotions effectively, and build healthy relationships.
Research indicates that authoritative parenting leads to successful and goal-oriented children who perform well academically and socially. They tend to be more curious, self-reliant, and less likely to misuse substances like drugs or alcohol. The positive influence of this style contributes to resiliency and helps children handle aggression and challenges better, making them among the happiest and most confident individuals.
Permissive Parenting Style
The permissive parenting style is characterized by warm and nurturing interactions but has minimal expectations and limited rules. Permissive parents often give their children a lot of freedom, avoiding strict discipline and acting more like friends than authority figures.
This approach typically features open communication, but may lack necessary guidance on important issues like bedtime, homework, and screen time, including computer and television usage.
While permissive parenting can create a loving and responsive environment, it may also lead to unhealthy eating habits, such as excessive snacks, and increase the risk of obesity and other health problems. Children raised with this style might struggle with self-regulation and face challenges in adulthood due to a lack of moderation and control.
They may become impulsive, selfish, or entitled, and could be more prone to rebellious or antisocial behavior. Without proper guidance, they might be unprepared to handle failure, emotional struggles, or even substance abuse, such as drugs or alcohol. This can also lead to anxious, defiant, or disappointed behaviors, impacting their overall social skills and self-esteem.
Example of Permissive Parenting Style
An example of permissive parenting is when parents are lax about rules regarding food and diet. For instance, they might let their children choose a special meal like fast food instead of encouraging a balanced diet with more fruit and vegetables.
This lack of structure can lead to picky eating habits and an unhealthy diet, which is often associated with lower fruit and vegetable intake. Such inexperience in trying new things can create difficulty for children in adapting to social settings and making healthy choices as they grow.
Effects of Permissive Parenting
Permissive parenting can have significant effects on children, often leading to a lack of boundaries and rules within the household. Permissive parents may avoid enforcing strict authority, which can result in high-standing kids who are accustomed to making their own decisions without much guidance.
This lack of structure often leads to behavioral problems such as impulsiveness, aggressiveness, and difficulties in decision-making.
The downsides of permissive parenting can include academic struggles, entitlement, and selfish behavior. Children might also face health problems like obesity due to an unhealthy food intake and lack of regular exercise. They may experience anxiety or depression because they have not learned self-control or rule-following.
Although permissive parents are often nurturing and encourage independence, without proper boundaries and consequences, children might find it challenging to adapt to the real world and manage social and academic endeavors effectively.
Authoritarian Parenting Style
Authoritarian parents have a strict approach to parenting, often setting clear rules that the child is expected to follow without question. This style involves 1-way communication, where the parent gives instructions, and the child obeys without room for negotiations. There is little explanation behind these rules, and mistakes are met with punishment rather than discussion.
This type of parenting aims to create a well-behaved child by ensuring obedience, but it can lead to aggression, shy behavior, or social difficulties in children. They may struggle with managing their emotions, especially anger, and develop low self-esteem, often rebelling against authority.
Children raised in such an environment may follow rules out of fear of being punished rather than understanding the reason behind them. This can result in difficulty with social skills and decision-making later in life, as they grow up without the flexibility to question or compromise.
Authoritarian parents often expect obedience without affection, and children may experience challenges in adulthood, such as relying on others for confirmation on what is right or wrong, leading to a follower mentality. Therapists like Alyson Schafer highlight that while this style can create well-behaved children, it often lacks the nurturing aspect needed for them to develop sound emotional regulation and lasting life lessons.
Example of Authoritarian Parenting Style
Authoritarian parents often enforce strict rules during mealtimes, like requiring children to finish everything on their plate. For example, in a family setting, these parents might insist that everyone eats a specific amount of food without discussion or input from the child.
This approach reflects a focus on rules rather than considering the child’s preferences or health. It emphasizes compliance over open communication about foods and culture, potentially creating a rigid environment around meals.
Effects of Authoritarian Parenting
Children raised by authoritarian parents may appear well-behaved at home, but they often face significant challenges. Because every thing or method is not perfect, it can many pros and cons also. So, these children might rebel against classmates or friends and struggle with social skills. The strict and rigid nature of authoritarian parenting can lead to indecisiveness and trouble with thinking critically, which negatively impacts their self-esteem.
They may feel judged and never enough, leading to self-esteem issues and resentfulness. This environment can also contribute to problems such as anger management, hostility, and aggression. Research suggests that these children may experience difficulties such as substance use, depression, and impulsive decisions in the future.
The high expectations and lack of emotional support can leave them feeling like they have to meet high achievers standards while coping with issues related to their backgrounds and parent’s backs.
Neglectful or Uninvolved Parenting Style
In neglectful or uninvolved parenting, the parent often provides little to no attention to the basic needs of the children. There is limited communication, minimal nurturing, and no expectations for the child’s behavior or development. This disciplining style leaves children with a lot of freedom, but without structure, rules, or emotional support, they are left to fend for themselves.
Many neglectful parents may struggle due to work obligations, late shifts, single parenting, or mental health concerns, which leads to family troubles. Children raised in these circumstances often have low self-esteem, face academic challenges, and lack proper coping strategies for controlling emotions. These children may also face danger or even be removed from home due to the lack of proper care.
The effects can be severe. Children of neglectful parents are often emotionally distant, prone to delinquent behavior, and may experience psychological aftermath like depression, hostile behavior, and attachment difficulties. Without appropriate role models, these children face challenges in forming lasting connections and may develop a fleeting bond with others.
The absence of affection and emotional connection can result in difficulties in social relationships, leaving them feeling removed from activities and events. In severe cases, physical and psychological damage may occur. As psychotherapist Fran Walfish explains, children raised in such environments may be self-sufficient but unprepared for long-term emotional bonds, which can result in lifelong struggles.
Example of Neglectful Parenting Style
In an uninvolved parenting style, parents are often too preoccupied with their own concerns to focus on their child’s needs. For example, a neglectful parent might not prioritize making sure their child has regular meals or enough food at home. The child may end up overeating or becoming overweight because they eat whatever is available, rather than having a balanced diet.
These parents might rarely go for groceries or ensure that healthy meals are prepared consistently, leaving the child with an easier time leaving home when they grow older, but without proper guidance on healthy eating habits.
Effects of Uninvolved Parenting
Uninvolved parenting has serious effects on children, leading to poor guidance and a lack of structure in their lives. Research shows that kids raised by neglectful parents often act out, facing the worst outcomes, such as substance use, rebelliousness, and even engaging in delinquency like vandalism, assault, rape, or petty theft.
They suffer from lower cognitive skills, have trouble in school, and show diminished emotional empathy. These children also deal with depression, diminished self-esteem, and mental health struggles, making it difficult to form strong bonds with others or respect the law.
As they grow, these children continue to suffer in terms of academic performance and social competence, often leading to impulsivity and trouble in everyday life. Researchers agree that this parenting style offers no benefits and only increases the risk of mental health issues.
With little to no parental involvement, these children struggle with forming healthy relationships, and their lack of guidance leaves them vulnerable to dangerous decisions and behaviors.
Sub-Types of Parenting Styles
Free-range Parenting
Free-range parenting allows children more independence by letting them be less supervised or even unsupervised in public spaces, such as walking to school or playing outside. While some people believe that this approach fosters self-sufficiency and resilience, others see it as neglectful or even endangered for the child.
In places like Utah, laws have been created to support free-range parents, shielding them from accusations of neglect. Proponents argue that hands-off parenting helps children engage in independent childhood activities, making them more capable and confident.
Helicopter Parenting
Helicopter parenting involves an overprotective parent who tries to control many aspects of their child’s life. These parents often intervene and obsess over their child’s successes and failures, constantly risk-assessing and driven by fear or anxiety. While they may have good intentions, this approach can prevent the child from developing important life skills like confidence and self-sufficiency.
According to the American Psychological Association, children of helicopter parents may struggle to manage emotions and behavior independently.
Snowplow Parenting
Snowplow parents, also known as lawnmower parents or bulldozer parents, are those who try to fulfill their child’s wants and demands by plowing down any obstacles standing in their way. Though these parents often have good intentions, they prevent their children from learning how to experience struggle and build a strong foundation for long-term happiness.
This can worsen anxiety and make children fear failure. A well-known example is the college admissions scandal, where high-profile celebrity parents were convicted of bribing colleges to admit children without earning it.
Lighthouse Parenting
The lighthouse approach, as introduced by Kenneth Ginsburg, MD, in Raising Kids to Thrive, involves balanced methods of parenting that combine loving support with clear expectations. Just as lighthouses provide a stable beacon of light to guide ships along the shoreline, this parenting style aims to be a stable beacon in a child’s life, offering protection while fostering trust.
Parents using this approach nurture and communicate effectively, helping their children measure themselves and develop essential life skills with a strong sense of balance and security. This style focuses on guiding and supporting children without being overly controlling, ensuring they feel both loved and prepared to face life’s challenges.
Attachment Parenting
Attachment parenting is a nurturing, hands-on approach that focuses on meeting a child’s needs through emotional stability and physical closeness. This method often includes practices like bed-sharing, co-sleeping, and extended breastfeeding, promoting attachment-based approaches that encourage positive discipline and sensitive-responsive parenting.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, such practices can enhance children’s language skills and foster higher levels of responsiveness and warmth. While it emphasizes the importance of balance and a flexible approach to raising children, it also ensures that independence is nurtured gradually, avoiding a less responsive or demanding parenting style.
Tiger Parenting
Tiger parenting is a rigid and harsh style where tiger parents enforce strict obedience and high demands on their children, aiming for success. Popularized by Amy Chua in her book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, this authoritarian method reflects Chinese culture and places constant expectations on children to achieve perfection.
Research suggests a correlation between such methods and increased anxiety among children, due to the relentless pressure and high demands placed upon them. This approach contrasts with more flexible parenting styles, often emphasizing success over emotional well-being.
Which Parenting Style is Most Encouraged?
When it comes to choosing the most encouraged parenting style, authoritative parenting stands out as the recommended approach. This style is characterized by clear communication and age-appropriate standards that help in fostering an emotionally stable environment for children.
It balances setting boundaries with giving choices and involves regular discussions about goals and expectations, such as wearing pajamas or a winter coat. This style is beneficial for addressing emotional health concerns and promoting love, affection, and praise.
Unlike more rigid methods, authoritative parenting uses positive reinforcement to encourage desired behavior and effectively manage annoying behaviors like banging or whining. For example, rewards like a tablet for completing homework can act as a reinforcer, helping children understand the consequence of their actions while maintaining a supportive and engaging environment.
How can Parents Change Their Parenting Style?
Adjusting a parenting style can be challenging, especially when dealing with behavior issues in kids. According to experts like Mulholland, parents often find it difficult to reflect on what worked or didn’t in their current approach. For those who are strict or permissive, finding a middle ground is key. Parents can benefit from attending workshops, schools, or early childhood centers for guidance.
Classes or reading books like “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen” So Kids Will Talk can also be useful. Consulting with a mental health therapist might help families develop a more effective approach. Open talks at the table about behavior change and punishments can foster better understanding and help parents adjust their style.
How to Set Limits for Children?
Setting limits for children can be likened to building a fence around a pasture where sheep can roam freely within the boundaries. Just as the fence defines where the sheep can play and find food, setting rules helps children understand where they can go and what they can do.
This approach ensures they have fun while also being responsible and safe. For example, allowing them to expand their range of activities, like choosing different toys or deciding what to eat, but always within good boundaries. It’s crucial to explain these limits clearly and provide the stuff they need to handle their choices wisely.
By doing so, you help children understand the type of behavior that is expected and make the setting of limits both effective and manageable.
