Parenting styles
A parenting style is a pattern of behaviors, attitudes, and approaches that a parent uses when interacting with and raising their child. The study of parenting styles is based on the idea that parents differ in their patterns of parenting and that these patterns can have an impact on their children's development and well-being. Parenting styles are distinct from specific parenting practices, since they represent broader patterns of practices and attitudes that create an emotional climate for the child. Parenting styles also encompass the ways in which parents respond to and make demands on their children.
Children go through many different stages throughout their childhood. Parents create their own parenting styles from a combination of factors that evolve over time. The parenting styles are subject to change as children begin to develop their own personalities. Parents may also change their parenting style between children, so siblings may be raised with different parenting styles. During the stage of infancy, parents try to adjust to a new lifestyle in terms of adapting and bonding with their new infant. Developmental psychologists distinguish between the relationship between the child and parent, which ideally is one of attachment, and the relationship between the parent and child, referred to as bonding. In the stage of adolescence, parents encounter new challenges, such as adolescents seeking and desiring freedom.
A child's temperament and parents' cultural patterns have an influence on the kind of parenting style a child may receive. The parenting styles that parents experience as children also influences the parenting styles they choose to use.
Early researchers studied parenting along a range of dimensions, including levels of responsiveness, democracy, emotional involvement, control, acceptance, dominance, and restrictiveness. In the 1960s, Diana Baumrind created a typology of three parenting styles, which she labeled as authoritative, authoritarian and permissive. She characterized the authoritative style as an ideal balance of control and autonomy. This typology became the dominant classification of parenting styles, often with the addition of a fourth category of indifferent or neglectful parents. Baumrind's typology has been criticized as containing overly broad categorizations and an imprecise and overly idealized description of authoritative parenting. Later researchers on parenting styles returned to focus on parenting dimensions and emphasized the situational nature of parenting decisions.
Some early researchers found that children raised in a democratic home environment were more likely to be aggressive and exhibit leadership skills, while those raised in a controlled environment were more likely to be quiet and non-resistant. Contemporary researchers have emphasized that love and nurturing children with care and affection encourage positive physical and mental progress in children. They have also argued that additional developmental skills result from positive parenting styles, including maintaining a close relationship with others, being self-reliant, and being independent.
Distinction with parenting practices
According to a literature review by Christopher Spera, Darling and Steinberg suggest that it is important to understand the differences between parenting styles and parenting practices: "Parenting practices are defined as specific behaviors that parents use to socialize their children", while parenting style is "the emotional climate in which parents raise their children."Studies have identified parenting practices that are associated with differences in child outcomes. Some of the practices shown to be associated with child outcomes include: Support, Engagement, Warmth, Recognition, Control, Monitoring, and Severe punishment. Parenting practices such as parental support, supervision, and strict boundaries appear to be associated with higher school grades, fewer behavioral problems, and better mental health. These components have no age limit and can start in preschool all the way through college.
Theories of child rearing
Beginning in the 17th century, two philosophers independently wrote works that have been widely influential in child-rearing. John Locke's 1693 book Some Thoughts Concerning Education is a well-known foundation for educational pedagogy from a Puritan standpoint. Locke highlights the importance of experiences to a child's development and recommends developing their physical habits first. In 1762, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau published a volume on education, Emile: or, On Education. He proposed that early education should be derived less from books and more from a child's interactions with the world. Among them, Rousseau is more in line with slow parenting, and Locke is more for concerted cultivation.Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development describes how children represent and reason about the world. This is a developmental stage theory that consists of a Sensorimotor stage, Preoperational stage, Concrete operational stage, and Formal operational stage. Piaget was a pioneer in the field of child development and psychology and continues to influence parents, educators, and other theorists with a significant effect on science.
Erik Erikson, a developmental psychologist, proposed eight life stages through which each person must develop. In order to move through the eight stages, there is a crisis that must occur. Then there is a new dilemma that encourages the growth through the next stage. In each stage, they must understand and balance two conflicting forces, and so parents might choose a series of parenting styles that helps each child as appropriate at each stage. The first five of his eight stages occur in childhood: The virtue of hope requires balancing trust with mistrust, and typically occurs from birth to one year old. Will balances autonomy with shame and doubt around the ages of two to three. Purpose balances initiative with guilt around the ages of four to six years. Competence balances industry against inferiority around ages seven to 12. Fidelity contrasts identity with role confusion, in ages 13 to 19. The remaining adult virtues are love, care, and wisdom.
Rudolf Dreikurs believed that pre-adolescent children's misbehavior was caused by their unfulfilled wish to be a member of a social group. He argued that they then act out a sequence of four mistaken goals: first, they seek attention. If they do not get it, they aim for power, then revenge and finally feel inadequate. This theory is used in education as well as parenting, forming a valuable theory upon which to manage misbehavior. Other parenting techniques should also be used to encourage learning and happiness. He emphasized the significance to establish a democratic family style that adopts a method of periodic democratic family councils while averting punishment. He advances "logical and natural consequences" that teach children to be responsible and understand the natural consequences of proper rules of conduct and improper behavior.
Frank Furedi is a sociologist with a particular interest in parenting and families. He believes that the actions of parents are less decisive than others claim. He describes the term infant determinism as the determination of a person's life prospects by what happens to them during infancy, arguing that there is little or no evidence for its truth. While commercial, governmental, and other interests constantly try to guide parents to do more and worry more for their children, he believes that children are capable of developing well in almost any circumstances. Furedi quotes Steve Petersen of Washington University in St. Louis: "development really wants to happen. A very poor environment is needed to interfere with development... do not raise your child in a closet, starve them, or hit them on the head with a frying pan". Similarly, the journalist Tim Gill has expressed concern about excessive risk aversion by parents and those responsible for children in his book No Fear. This aversion limits the opportunities for children to develop sufficient adult skills, particularly in dealing with risk, but also in performing adventurous and imaginative activities.
In 1998, independent scholar Judith Rich Harris published The Nurture Assumption, in which she argued that scientific evidence, particularly from the field of behavioral genetics, showed that parenting styles generally do not have significant effects on children's development, except in cases of severe child abuse or child neglect. She proposed that children turn out the way they do primarily due to two alternative reasons: genetic effects, and social group effects associated with the children's peer groups. She said that the purported effects of different forms of parenting can instead be attributed to heredity, the culture at large, and children's own influence on how their parents treat them. Harris was criticized for taking the point of "parental upbringing seems to matter less than previously thought" and misleadingly implying that "parents do not matter." Harris never actually claimed parents do not matter, but it was feared that the message would be misinterpreted by lay readers.
Despite Harris's arguments, some recent studies suggest that parents can influence the outcomes of their children. For example, one study found that the personality traits of parents are better predictors of the outcomes of their children than those of the children. Other recent studies seem to indicate that parenting does have impacts on adoptive children as well. For example, one study found that children adopted by parents who reported warm parenting at 21 months postplacement tended to have lower levels of internalizing and externalizing problems at 3 years postplacement. However, the study was unable to fully explore whether the parenting style was influenced by the child's characteristics. Another study similarly showed that warm adoptive parenting at 27 months predicted lower levels of child externalizing problems at ages 6 and 7, but also was unable to rule out the possibility that this association was due to the child's effect on the parents rather than the parents' effect on the child.