Different Parenting Styles and Their Effect on Children

A parenting style is a psychological practice adopted by the parents of children. It is comprised of the types of child discipline strategies that a parent uses.

There are different parenting styles incorporated by the people which is dependent on a lot of factors.

You might be wondering how different parenting styles affect a child’s upbringing.

Basically, these different parenting styles are well known to have a life-long impact on children. Typically, we get to observe the four types of parenting styles, which are discussed below.

Diana Baumrind’s parenting styles

Diana Baumrind is a researcher known for her look into parenting styles and their

effects on children. She has divided parenting styles into two dimensions of parenting.

1. Parental responsiveness – a parenting style in which the parent responds to the needs of a child
2. Parental demandingness – a parenting style in which the parent expects a child to be more responsible and mature In addition to these two dimensions, Baumrind has identified four different parenting styles/ psychology.

Authoritarian parenting style

Parents who use this style of parenting might be heard saying, “Children should be seen and not heard.”

These parents have low responsiveness and high demandingness. Their focus is on obedience and enforcing rules and giving out punishments for breaking those rules.

They often do not take the child’s feelings into consideration. Instead of teaching a child why something is wrong, they focus more on disciplining such mistakes.

Children of authoritarian parents are more likely to develop problems with self-esteem due to the low value of their opinion.

Children raised in an authoritarian parenting style may also become aggressive or hostile because they mirror their parent’s behavior. They may also become good liars in an effort to avoid punishment.

Authoritative parenting style

Not to be confused with authoritarian parenting, authoritative parenting style takes the child’s feelings into consideration. They have both high responsiveness and high demandingness.

Authoritative parents explain the reasons behind the rules. They still make it clear that the adults are in charge, but instead of punishments, they often rely on rewarding good behavior to raise their children.

Children who are raised by authoritative parents often grow into adulthood as responsible adults who have no fear of expressing their opinions.

They are better at making decisions and evaluating risks on their own.

Permissive parenting

This type of parenting style is very lenient. It is a style of high responsiveness and low demandingness. While parents may set rules, they rarely enforce them.

Parents with this style will often only step in if there is a serious problem. They often adopt an attitude of letting kids be kids. They often take on more of a friend role than a parenting role.

Parents using this technique often don’t put much effort into discouraging poor decisions or bad behavior in their children.

Children raised with this type of parenting style are more likely to experience struggles when it comes to academics. They sometimes exhibit more behavioral problems and often have issues with authority and rules.

They often have low self-esteem due to a lack of boundaries and may report frequent feelings of sadness.

Uninvolved parenting

Out of the four different parenting styles, this style is a combination of low demandingness and responsiveness.

Parents with this parenting style tend not to have many rules. They may not give the child much guidance, nurturing, or parental attention. They tend to expect children to raise themselves, devoting little time or energy to meet a child’s basic needs.

The uninvolved parent is not always intentionally uninvolved. Physical or mental health issues or simply the stresses of maintaining a job and a household may lead to this style of parenting.

Like the children of permissive parents, children of uninvolved parents tend to struggle with self-esteem issues and report high levels of unhappiness. 

They also tend to perform poorly in school. Children of parents who use the uninvolved parenting style also tend to have higher instances of substance abuse.

An example of their use: Teens and Vaping

One worry of parents these days is the rise of vaping among teens. Recently, there has been a scare involving teens and adults getting sick due to vaping cartridges.

Though the Food and Drug Administration has linked the illness to black-market cartridges for vape pens and vape juice containing vitamin E oil, parents should be concerned about teen vaping.

How would the different parenting styles work to address this problem with their children?

Let’s take the permissive and uninvolved versions first. Since both of these have low demandingness, they likely would not have a problem with teen vaping unless their children came to them with a problem.

The permissive parent might set some rules because they want to respond to needs, but the uninvolved parent wouldn’t care. In essence, they throw the responsibility onto the teen to make the decisions.

Although it may be tempting to take an authoritarian stance on vaping, research shows that the authoritative parenting style may be more successful. Yes, there are negative consequences, but taking a hard stance might make a teen hide their habit or fight back.

An authoritative parent would explain that many teens become addicted to nicotine and are more likely to try analog cigarettes, as well as the health effects of nicotine over time.

From these examples, you can see that out of the different parenting styles, the best style requires a lot of work both to enforce rules and to understand a child’s needs for guidance.

Still, it can take time to overcome the parenting habits we were taught by our parents. That’s the pattern we most often default toward.

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