December 6, 2019 by Gabby Inkel
Throughout our child development course we’ve talked about human development as well as how children become who they are, but do the people who raised them impact that? There is plenty of research and evidence to suggest that styles parents use with their children have direct correlation to the child’s life over time.
What is a Parent’s True Role in their Child’s Life?
According to the American Psychological Association, parents three main objectives are securing children’s health and safety, prepare the child/children for life as successful adults, and passing along cultural values (APA, 2018). Parents play a huge role in their child’s life as far as their development. How a parent parents their child is what controls the person their child is when they grow older. Without parents, we would have no direction or guidance growing up.
How Are Parenting Styles Categorized?
Parenting styles are put into four categories, permissive, authoritative, uninvolved, and authoritarian. Each category has a different level of demandingness along with responsiveness, and each parenting style will ultimately cause a child to develop in a certain manner. For example, children with authoritarian parents connect approval with love since they’re always looking to please their parents. On the other hand, children whose parents are permissive, often have too much freedom from their parental figures often have trouble with behavior management as they grow up. Parents who use an uninvolved approach don’t care enough will cause their children to have trust issues carrying into adulthood and often will feel a sense of neglect. Finally, children with authoritative parents will have high self esteem due to being raised in a home where expectations were clear, making sense of confidence and security be felt.
Why Do Parents Parent The Way They Do?
There is always reasoning behind the decisions we make in life, especially parents. Parents have to make choices carefully and make sure that what they’re doing is right for the development of their child. A psychologist named Diana Baumrind explored a study on more than 100 preschool-age children. Many times not only is a child’s development contingent upon their parenting style, but the parenting style can also be a result of the child’s behavior. If a child is misbehaved and mischeifious, the parents will have to be more invested in disciplining the child than of an easy-going youngster. Parenting styles not only are based on the behavior of the child but many other factors. Culture, their own childhoods, social influences, and numerous more factors come into play.
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A Look Deeper Into the Effect of Different Parenting Styles
Parenting styles are usually classified in four categories; authoritarian, neglectful, indulgent, and authoritative. An authoritarian parent is classified as one who are punitive and is likely to believe in the “spare the rod, spoil the child” rule. This parenting affects children in their early childhood by causing their child to lack some critical social and communication skills that are important to leadership. A neglectful parent is one who does not engage with their child at all and just let them live their life. Children of these types of parents tend to not follow rules because they never had to when growing up, and they tend to have some behavioral issues. Indulging parenting is a parent who is very tentative to their children and provide them with lots of warmth and attention. These types of parents have few rules and have the “anything goes” type attitude; most children feel as though their parents are more like friends than parents. Children of these parents are usually very creative but usually have little self control and few boundaries. The last parenting style that is known to be the best is authoritative. These types of parents encourage their kids to be independent but also set boundaries for themselves. Authoritative parents often discipline their children but not punish them too harshly. This parenting impacts the child a lot because as they grow older, these parents give them more freedom the older they get which allows the child’s social skills, self-control, and self reliance to be more developed than others.
What is the Best Parenting Style?
Babies don’t come with an owners manual, making it hard to appoint one parenting style as the “right” or “best” one. Especially with babies having their own personalities, disabilities, needs, so on and so forth, but there are a few styles that are known to be most efficient in raising children in a positive way. According to Joseph M. V., John J. (2008). Impact of Parenting Styles on Child Development, “good parenting is parenting that prepares children to meet the needs of the specific culture or subculture in which they live in.” Although it has been stated by Ronald E Riggio Ph.D. that the “gold standard” is authoritative parenting. I personally believe that I was raised through authoritative parenting. It’s the kind of parenting every parent should strive to use. The outcomes of this parenting as stated earlier in this blog give the child an advantage because they were well raised as kids. When I have children, I will definitely strive to use the authoritative parenting style.
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