4 Parenting Styles : Which type of parent are you?
How you handle conflict or how you set the rules in your house will largely shape your child’s personality and social skills. There are many different parenting styles that parents consciously or unconsciously adopt. These normally fall into 4 different categories that researchers have identified. They may overlap once in a while but you can notice a definite pattern in a person’s parenting style. You and you partner should ideally share similar or complimentary parenting styles (something that should be discussed early on).
Here are the different parenting styles that are seen:
- An authoritarian parent is normally quite controlling, punitive and rigid in their rules and decisions. Children do not normally have a say in setting their own limits or boundaries and disagreement in opinions are not tolerated. These are the traditional-minded “children should be seen but not heard” people.
Children of these parents tend to be withdrawn, a-social and are often uneasy around their peers. Girls tend to be very dependent on their parents and boys are unusually hostile.
- A permissive parent has a very lax approach towards child rearing. They try to be more of a friend then a parent figure and set very few disciplinary measures. Serious problems might be addressed by them but smaller misdemeanours will be allowed to pass without comment because they believe “kids will be kids”. They don’t tend to check bad behaviour early on in their child’s life and act more as a buddy their kid can to talk to.
Children of these parents tend to be quite moody and have low social skills and almost no self-control. They are dependent and share many of the same characteristics as children of authoritarian parents.
- An authoritative parent (not to be confused with ‘authoritarian’) is firm, clear and consistent in setting limits and rules. However they differ from an authoritarian parent because they try to reason with their children and explain to them why they should behave in a particular way. They are also emotionally supportive, loving and encourage their kids to be more independent.
Children of authoritative parents generally fare the best as they are independent, friendly, self-assertive and cooperative. They regulate their own behaviour effectively, including their emotional and social life.
- An uninvolved parent is one who shows virtually no interest in their child and displays indifference or rejecting behaviour. They are extremely uninvolved in their child’s behaviour or life. This kind of parenting borders on a form of child abuse as they see their role as a parent is to only provide food, shelter and clothing. Normally this kind of parenting is seen in people who have mental health problems or in those who are addicts.
Children of these parents are seen to be the worst off as they show signs of disrupted emotional development and due to the lack of any kind of support or attachment their cognitive development tends to be affected as well.
There are other forms of parenting that have also been identified in recent times such as ‘helicopter parenting’ where a parent is seen showing extreme caution and worry over the safety of their children or ‘instinct parenting’ which is not really fixing on one method of parenting but instead going according to instinct or their own experience of how they were raised.
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