A. Parenting Style Defined
-Individual behaviors of parenting may influence a child's development, but looking at these behaviors in isolation can be misleading. Many of these behaviors work together.
-Specific parenting practices are less important to look at than the broad parenting technique.
-Parenting style is meant to describe "normal" variations and does not include deviations you would see in abusive or neglectful homes.
-Normal parenting involves issues that revolve around control; the main objectives of parenting are to influence, teach, and control their children.
-Parenting style captures two important facets of parenting: parental responsiveness and parental demandingness.
*Responsiveness (parental warmth or supportiveness) "the extent to which parents intentionally foster individuality, self-regulation, and self-assertion by being attuned, supportive, and acquiescent to a child's special needs and demands".
*Demandingness (behavioral control): "the claims parents make on children to become integrated into the family whole, by their maturity demands, supervision, disciplinary efforts and willingness to confront the child who disobeys".
B. Four Parenting Styles
1. Indulgent (permissive, non-directive)
-Nontraditional, lenient, do not require mature behavior.
-Allow a lot of self-regulation, avoid confrontation.
*Democratic Indulgent: more conscientious, engaged, and committed to the child, but still lenient.
*Non-directive
2. Authoritarian
-Highly demanding and directive
-Not responsive
- "They are obedience- and status-oriented, and expect their orders to be obeyed without explanation"
-Provide structure and rules.
*nonauthoritarian-directive, who are directive, but not intrusive or autocratic in their use of power.
*authoritarian-directive, who are highly intrusive.
3. Authoritative
-Demanding and responsive
-Clear standards for their children, but they're not intrusive or restrictive.
-Their disciplinary methods are supportive, rather than punitive. They want their children to be assertive as well as socially responsible, and self-regulated as well as cooperative".
4. Uninvolved
-Low responsiveness and demandingness.
-"In extreme cases, this parenting style might encompass both rejecting–neglecting and neglectful parents,
although most parents of this type fall within the normal range".
C. Psychological Control
Psychological control "refers to control attempts that intrude into the
psychological and emotional development of the child" through use of parenting practices such as guilt induction, withdrawal of love, or shaming.
-authoritative and authoritarian parents are equally high in behavioral control, but authoritative parents tend to be low in psychological control, while authoritarian parents tend to be high.
D. Consequences For Children
-Parenting style predicts child well-being in social competence, academic performance, psychosocial development, and problem behavior.
Research consistently finds:
-Children/adolescents rate themselves as more socially and instrumentally competent with authoritative parents than non-authoritative.
-Children/adolescents with uninvolved parents perform most poorly in all domains.
-In general, parental responsiveness predicts social competence and psychosocial functioning, while parental demandingness is associated with instrumental competence and behavioral control (i.e., academic
performance and deviance). This indicates that children in:
-Authoritarian: perform moderately well in school, uninvolved in problem behavior, have poorer social skills, lower self-esteem, higher levels of depression.
-Indulgent: Perform less well in school, have more problem behaviors, higher self esteem, better social skills, lower levels of depression.
**In general, authoritative parenting is best. These children are able to balance "external conformity and achievement demands with their need for individuation and autonomy".
E. Influence of Sex, Ethnicity, or Family Type
-Demandingness seems to be less critical to girls' well-being than to boys'.
-"Authoritative parenting predicts good psychosocial outcomes and problem behaviors for adolescents in all ethnic groups studied (African-, Asian-, European-, and Hispanic Americans), but it is associated with academic performance only among European Americans and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic Americans and others have argued that observed ethnic differences in the association of parenting style with child outcomes may be due to differences in social context, parenting practices, or the cultural meaning of specific dimensions of parenting style".
F. Conclusion
-Authoritative parenting is best.
-There are issues with studying parenting styles. "Foremost among these are issues of definition, developmental change in the manifestation and correlates of parenting styles, and the processes underlying the benefits of authoritative parenting".
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