Parenting styles

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Four main parenting styles have been identified in early child development research: authoritative, authoritarian and permissive and neglectful.^[1]

Authoritative parenting is characterized by high expectations of compliance to parental rules and directions, an open dialogue about those rules and behaviors, and is a child-centered approach characterized by a warm, positive affect.

Authoritarian parenting is characterized by high expectations of compliance to parental rules and directions, the use of more coercive techniques to gain compliance, little parent-child dialogue. This is a parent-centered approach characterized by cold affect.

Permissive parenting is characterized as having few behavioral expectations for the child, and is a child-centered approach characterized by warm affect.

Neglectful parenting is similar to permissive parenting but is a parent centered approach characterized by cold affect.

Research into the child behavior outcomes associated with each type of parenting has traditionally shown a strong benefit to authoritative parenting. These children have been shown to have more self-discipline, emotional self-control, more friends and better school performance. However, recent research has identified a number of caveats. First, authoritarian parenting may be more effective in certain contexts and in social groups other than those studied in early research. Second, little research has examined the genetic influences that may underlie the findings. For instance, harsh parenting may produce harsher children through the mechanism of genetic transmission of these traits. Behavior genetics research is currently examining the influence of genes as they pertain to parenting styles. The final and most important criticism of the parenting styles research is that parenting has been shown to be part of a bi-directional relationship between parent and child. Thus, characterizing a parenting style as arising from the parent leaves out the essential influence of the child on the parent-child dyad.