Types Of Parenting Styles

The parenting style construct was designed by Diana Baumrind after she observed the way parents interacted with their preschoolers. Today, there are four widely accepted parenting styles used in psychology.

Authoritative Parenting

This is is the most successful approach to child rearing. It involves high acceptance involvement in the child's life. These parents are warm and sensitive to their child's needs. These parents allow their children to express their thoughts and feelingswithout any pressure or judgement.

Authoritative parents try to gradually and appropriately grant autonomy to their children, allowing their child to make decisions in situations where he/she is ready. Whenever the child and parent disagree, they try to solve their problems by engaging in joint decision making. Children of such parents tend to have high self esteem,self-control, cooperative and achieve more in academics.

Authoritarian Parenting

These parents are low in acceptance and involvement in the child's life. In order to control the child's behavior they tend to yell, criticize, punish and threaten the child. These parents make decisions for their child and expect them to accept whatever they tell without any questioning. These parents hold unrealistically high expectations from their children.

Authoritarian parents often use psychological control by manipulating the child's individuality and parental attachment. If the child doesn't fulfil the parents command, they tend to withdraw their affection. These children learn that their parents will accept them on certain conditions. The children of such parents tend to be aggressive and engage in antisocial acts. These children are poor in their academic achievements. Boys tend to show high rates of anger, while girls tend to be dependent and are easily overwhelmed by challenging task.

Permissive Parenting

Permissive parents are warm and accepting, but engage in very little behavior control. These parents may either be overindulgent or inattentive. These parents grant their children with autonomy and allow them to make decisions for themselves at a very young age, even when the child is ready. Since the parent doesn't monitor the child, the child can eat meals and go to bed whenever they want to.

These children don't do household chores and don't learn any good manners. The children of permissive parents are disobedient and rebellious. These children are dependent on adults, highly demanding and poor at academic achievements.

Uninvolved Parenting

These parents exercise very little behavior control and are low in acceptance and involvement. These parents normally lead a stressful life and they have very little time and energy for children. Uninvolved parents are often depressed or emotionally detached, therefore they are unable to provide their children with necessary resources. These parents are generally indifferent to their child's decision or views.

Involved parenting at its extreme is a form of child neglect. As these children grow, they have problems such as poor academic achievement, depression, aggressive behavior and antisocial behavior