What is the best parenting approach, and why?

Authoritative parenting is often seen as the optimum method since it combines warmth and flexibility while ensuring that the parents remain in control. Children with authoritative parents understand what is expected of them. Their parents explain the rationale for the regulations and the repercussions of disobeying them.

What is a positive parenting style?

Positive parenting is offering children love, warmth, and compassion. It is about encouraging and training children to behave in the manner that you want them to. It is about empowering children by providing a strong message: you are loved, you are good, and you matter.

What is Your Parenting Style, and Why is it Important?

Your parenting style may influence everything from your child's self-esteem to their academic performance. It is critical to ensure that your parenting style promotes healthy growth and development since how you connect with and punish your kid will have long-term consequences.

Authoritarian Parenting

Do any of these statements sound like you?

You think children should be seen, not heard
You do not take your child's sentiments into account
When a child queries the reasoning for a rule, you've used the phrase "because I said so"

If any of these are true, you may be an authoritarian parent. The authoritarian style of parenting emphasises rigorous rules, compliance, and punishment. These parents have high expectations and will not hesitate to chastise children who do not follow their rules.

Authoritarian parents take control of decision-making, rarely allowing their children to participate. Authoritarian parents, like army drill sergeants, are neither caring, tolerant, or communicative. They create the rules and impose the penalties with little consideration for a child's perspective.

How Does Authoritarian Parenting Affect Children?

Children raised by authoritarian parents are frequently well-behaved at home but may rebel when they are among classmates or friends. Children may also suffer from the following:

Social skills
Indecisiveness
Difficulty thinking independently
Low self-esteem
Poor judgement
Anger issues
Control issues
Resentment
Hostility and violence

According to some studies, children whose parents were authoritarian were more likely to use substances and experience sadness.

Authoritative Parenting

Do any of these statements sound like you?

You invest a lot of work into developing and maintaining a great connection with your children
You explain the rationale behind your rules
You establish boundaries, enforce rules, and impose penalties, but you also consider your child's emotions
You use positive disciplinary tactics such as praise and prizes

If these comments seem familiar, you may be practising authoritative parenting, which is regarded as the "gold standard" parenting style. Authoritative parents provide rules and limits for their children while still allowing them to make their own choices.

With an authoritative parenting style, parents support their children's emotions while emphasising that adults are ultimately in control. They devote time and effort to preventing behaviour issues before they arise. They also use positive disciplinary tactics, such as praise and incentive systems, to promote good behaviour.

Mistakes are seen as a learning experience by authoritative parents, who have set clear expectations for their children. They are loving and friendly, yet they emphasise the value of responsibility and discipline.

How Does Authoritative Parenting Affect Children?

Children raised with authoritative parenting are more likely to be joyful, confident, and successful. They are also more likely to make informed judgements and assess safety threats on their own. Authoritative parenting is associated with academic success, increased self-esteem, and resilience.

Children with authoritative parents are more likely to have the following beneficial outcomes:

Close and loving ties with parents
A tendency to be responsible and courteous
Capability to moderate their aggressiveness
Individuals with high self-esteem
Confidence and self-regulation are more likely to experience happiness and success
Ability to clearly explain their feelings

Children who are authoritatively parented may be trusted to make sound decisions on their own, and they often set high goals for themselves. These children may function well academically and socially, and they are less likely to use drugs or alcohol.

Permissive Parenting

Do any of these statements sound like you?

You establish rules but rarely enforce them
You don't impose penalties very frequently
You believe your kid will learn best with little involvement from you
You let your children do anything they want, even if that means drinking soft drinks with every meal

If these remarks seem familiar, you may be engaging in permissive parenting. Permissive parents are tolerant, only intervening when there is a major issue. They are very tolerant, adopting the mindset of "kids will be kids." They often behave more like buddies than authoritarian leaders.

Permissive parents meet their children's needs without imposing much punishment. When they do impose rules, they may not stick. For example, if a kid pleads, they will return privileges, and if a child promises to be nice, they may be allowed to leave time-out early. Permissive parents are the polar opposite of authoritarian.

How Does Permissive Parenting Affect Children?

Permissive parents' children are used to getting anything they want since they have a high status in the family. They may have more behavioural issues since they do not respect authority and norms.

Other disadvantages of the lenient parenting style may include:

Lack of responsibility
Having difficulty making decisions
Impulsiveness and aggression
Lack of freedom and personal responsibility
Anxiety and depression
Academic difficulties

Permissive parenting often leads to children becoming entitled, egotistical, and selfish. These children may also fail to put forth effort in school, job, or social activities since they are not required to do so at home.

Furthermore, children raised by permissive parents are more likely to develop health issues such as obesity because permissive parents struggle to regulate harmful food consumption or encourage regular exercise or good sleep patterns.

Permissive parents often fail to enforce beneficial behaviours, such as ensuring a child brushes their teeth, making them more likely to develop dental cavities.

Neglectful or Uninvolved Parenting

Do any of the following statements ring familiar?

You do not question your kid about school or homework
You hardly know where your kid is or who they are with
You spend little time with your kid
You do not have many rules or expectations

If these remarks seem similar, you may be an uninvolved or negligent parent. Neglectful parents essentially ignore their children, providing them with little direction, caring, or parental guidance. Parents don't establish boundaries or expectations, and parents often have little idea of what their children are doing.

Uninvolved parents expect children to raise themselves. They do not dedicate much time or effort to fulfilling children's fundamental requirements. Uninvolved parents may lack information about child development or feel that their kid would thrive without their supervision.

Uninvolved parents may be inattentive, although this is not necessarily deliberate. A parent who suffers from mental illness or drug misuse, for example, may be unable to regularly meet their child's physical or emotional requirements.

How Does Uninvolved Parenting Affect Children?

Children with inattentive parents often misbehave because they lack supervision, structure, and parental participation. According to research, children with uninvolved parents have the lowest results and are more likely to encounter the following:

Substance usage
Rebelliousness
Delinquency
Reduced cognitive and emotional empathy
Lowered self-esteem

Children with uninvolved parents may, for example, get into difficulty at school. In addition, they may be hesitant to build relationships with others and express sadness. Academic achievement and social skills often decline.

The Impact of Parenting Styles

Research indicates that parenting methods may have a variety of effects on children. Some elements of a child's life that may be impacted, either now or in the future, include:

Academics: Parenting styles may influence academic success and motivation.
Mental Health: Parenting practices may have an impact on children's mental health. Children reared by authoritarian, permissive, or uninvolved parents are more likely to have anxiety, sadness, and other mental health issues.
Self-esteem: Children raised by authoritative parents have higher self-esteem than children raised by alternative parenting styles.
Social relationships: Parenting approaches may influence how children interact with other individuals. For example, children raised by permissive parents are more prone to being bullied, but those reared by authoritarian parents are more inclined to bully others.
Adult relationships: Researchers discovered that children raised by rigid, authoritarian parents are more likely to suffer emotional abuse in adult love relationships.

Can You Change Your Parenting Style?

If you realise that your parenting style is more authoritarian, permissive, or uninvolved, you may make efforts to become more authoritative.

Strategies that may be useful include:

Listen
Spend some time listening to what your child has to say. Allow them to express their thoughts, ideas, and concerns with you.
Establish rules
Set clear rules for your family and explain your expectations to your child. In addition to informing your kid of the rules, explain why they exist.
Consider your child's feedback
Authoritarian parents establish the rules, but they are also prepared to listen to and consider their children's emotions when making choices.
Stay consistent
Enforce rules consistently, but make sure the rules are fair, reasonable, and instructional.

Developing a more authoritative parenting style requires patience. With experience and persistent effort, however, you will notice that your parenting style progressively evolves to a more supportive, engaged approach, which may lead to improved developmental results.

Children May Influence Their Parents' Styles

There is also evidence that a child's behaviour influences parenting techniques. One research discovered that when a child misbehaves, a parent's reaction is more unpredictable. One interpretation of this finding is that children may misbehave not because their parents were too lenient, but because parents with difficult or violent children gave up attempting to manage their children.

The relationships between parenting styles and behaviours are occasionally weak, therefore the predicted child outcomes do not occur. For example, parents with domineering approaches may have children who are disobedient or participate in delinquent behaviour. Permissive parenting methods may produce self-confident and academically successful children.

Cultural influences have a substantial impact on parenting techniques and child outcomes. There is no uniform parenting approach that is always ideal. For example, whereas authoritarian parenting is linked to lower academic attainment, the impact is less significant in Hispanic households.

Subtypes Of Parenting Styles

Free-range Parenting: Free-range parents offer their children the freedom to be less monitored or unattended in public. For a long time, parents who used this technique were labelled negligent, and many believed they were endangering their children.
Helicopter Parenting: If you're an overprotective parent who feels compelled to regulate almost every area of your child's life, you're probably a helicopter parent. Helicopter parents continually meddle in their children's lives, obsessing over their accomplishments and failings.
Snowplough Parenting: Snowplough parents (also known as lawnmower or bulldozer parents) are prepared to drop everything to meet their child's desires and demands, no matter how small. They effectively "plough down" everything in their child's path.
Lighthouse Parenting: The lighthouse parenting style entails striking the right balance between loving, protecting, communicating, and nurturing your kid. Parents attempt to guide and help their children in the same way that a lighthouse does.
Attachment Parenting: Attachment parenting takes a caring, hands-on approach. These parents believe that addressing a child's needs first promotes independence and mental stability. This parenting style values physical contact, bed-sharing and co-sleeping, prolonged nursing, good discipline, and other attachment-based methods of raising children.
Tiger Parenting: Tiger parents are sometimes severe and demanding, expecting compliance and accomplishment. Some studies have identified a link between tiger parenting and anxiety in children, presumably owing to their parents' high standards and persistent aspirations for perfection.

Parenting styles are connected to a variety of child outcomes, with the authoritative approach being associated with good behaviours such as high self-esteem and competence. Other key aspects, such as culture, children's temperament, perceptions of parental treatment, and societal pressures, all have an impact on children's behaviour.

Understanding your parenting style might help you experiment with various parenting practices for your children. If you discover that you have a more strict, indulgent, or dismissive attitude towards your children, you may take measures to become more engaged and authoritative in your interactions with them.

FAQs on What Is Your Parenting Style, and Why is it Important?

What is the best parenting approach, and why?
Authoritative parenting is often seen as the optimum method since it combines warmth and flexibility while ensuring that the parents remain in control. Children with authoritative parents understand what is expected of them. Their parents explain the rationale for the regulations and the repercussions of disobeying them.
What is a positive parenting style?
Positive parenting is offering children love, warmth, and compassion. It is about encouraging and training children to behave in the manner that you want them to. It is about empowering children by providing a strong message: you are loved, you are good, and you matter.