Parenting styles: An evidence-based, cross-cultural guide

© 2010-2018 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved

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The concept of parenting styles was first introduced by Diane Baumrind to explain differences in the mode parents attempt to control and socialize their children.

Do parents evidence lots of affection, or remain aloof?

Practise they wait blind obedience, or encourage children to inquire questions?

Do they enforce limits, or let kids do as they please?

Here you will observe information well-nigh the iv bones parenting styles:

• opens in a new windowAuthoritative parenting, who encourage kids to be responsible, to think for themselves, and to consider the reasons for rules
• opens in a new windowAuthoritarian parenting, who await their orders to be obeyed without question and who rely on punishment–or the threat of penalty–to command their kids
• opens in a new windowPermissive parenting, who are responsive and warm (a good thing) just besides reluctant to enforce rules (a bad thing)

• Uninvolved parenting, who offering their children fiddling emotional support and fail to enforce standards of bear

As I explicate in the linked articles above, administrative parenting is associated with the best child outcomes. Uninvolved parenting is linked with the worst.

For more data, see as well these reviews of

• The show that opens in a new windowkids from authoritarian families are worse off than kids from administrative families
• opens in a new windowThe apparent effects of permissive parenting, and the methods that researchers use to identify parenting styles

And here–below–is an overview of the four basic parenting styles: What researchers mean when they talk about parenting way, and how different styles seem to impact children.

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What practise researchers mean when they talk nearly "parenting style"?

Parents influence their children through specific practices, similar encouraging them to play outdoors, or helping them with their homework.

But parenting is more than a fix of specific practices. What about the overall approach that parents take to guiding, controlling, and socializing their kids? The attitudes that parents have well-nigh their children, and the resulting emotional climate that creates?

It's this general pattern–this emotional climate–that researchers refer to equally "parenting style" (Darling and Steinberg 1993). And enquiry suggests that parenting styles have important effects on the ways that children develop.

Then how do psychologists distinguish one parenting style from some other?

It started in the 1960s with psychologist Diane Baumrind. She noted that the very idea of parental control–of adults acting every bit authority figures–had fallen into disrepute.

Possibly that's because people were equating "control" with bullheaded obedience, harsh punishments, and domineering, manipulative behavior (Baumrind 1966).

To avoid perils of absolutism, many parents tried the opposite arroyo. They put very few demands on their children, avoiding whatever sort of parental control at all.

To Baumrind, these were choices between 2 extremes.

Wasn't there a compromise? A moderate approach that fosters self-discipline, responsibility, and independence?

And then Baumrind proposed three distinct parenting styles:

• Authoritarian parenting, which emphasizes bullheaded obedience, stern discipline, and controlling children through punishments–which may include the withdrawal of parental affection

• Permissive parenting, which is characterized by emotional warmth and a reluctance to enforce rules, and

• Authoritative parenting, a more counterbalanced approach in which parents expect kids to meet certain behavioral standards, but likewise encourage their children to think for themselves and to develop a sense of autonomy.

Later, researchers added a fourth manner, uninvolved parenting (Maccoby and Martin 1983).

Uninvolved parents are similar permissive parents in their failure to enforce standards. But unlike permissive parents, uninvolved parents are non nurturing and warm. They provided kids with food and shelter, just not much else.

Another way to think near it

In addition to adding a new category to Baumrind'southward original scheme, researchers have re-stated her definitions in terms of two dimensions—"responsiveness" and "demandingness."

• Responsiveness is "the extent to which parents intentionally foster individuality, cocky-regulation, and self-assertion by being attuned, supportive, and acquiescent to children'due south special needs and demands" (Baumrind 1991).

• Demandingness refers to "the claims parents make on children to become integrated into the family unit whole, by their maturity demands, supervision, disciplinary efforts and willingness to face up the kid who disobeys" (Baumrind 1991).

Both of these qualities are desirable, hence authoritative parenting–which is both responsive and demanding–is considered the optimal manner.

Other styles are missing ane or both qualities. Authoritarian parenting is demanding but non responsive. Permissive parenting is responsive just not demanding. And uninvolved parenting is neither demanding nor responsive.

Do people actually sort neatly into ane of these categories? Isn't it possible for a parent to combine more than one style, or fail to fit into this scheme birthday?

I remember the respond is pretty clearly yes. This scheme is very useful, simply similar whatever attempt to categorize human behavior, information technology has its limitations.

Get-go, in that location are the usual cultural caveats. Baumrind developed her organization for understanding parents in the United states of america.

Moreover, her subjects were more often than not white and middle class. While researchers have had success applying the categories to other cultural groups, we can't assume they will fit everywhere.

Second, fifty-fifty when the categories fit the culture, there is going to be blurring at the edges.

Equally noted higher up, the administrative parenting style was get-go conceived as a kind of middle footing between permissiveness and absolutism. And when we speak of someone existence "responsive," or "enervating," these are relative terms.

So the iv bones parenting styles represent a continuum. Some parents might straddle the line between authoritarianism and authoritativeness. Other parents might discover themselves on the border betwixt authoritativeness and permissiveness.

Where do we draw the lines? That tin vary from one study to the next.

When researchers classify parents, they unremarkably measure and score levels of responsiveness and demandingness.

Then they decide how high or low a score must be to meet the criteria for a given parenting mode. Often, researchers choose their cutoffs past "grading on a curve"–looking over the distribution of scores for the entire pool of written report participants.

For example, researchers often ascertain a parent equally "permissive" if her score for "responsiveness" falls in the upper 3rd of the distribution and her score for "demandingness" falls in the lower tertiary of the distribution.

If the distribution changes from i study to the next — because the pool of study participants differs — the same score could result in a different classification.

Then at that place is the problem of how beliefs gets measured. How do researchers decide if a parent is more or less responsive? More than or less demanding?

Oft, researchers make judgments based on questionnaires. Parents are asked to rate how much they agree (or disagree) with statements like

"I set strict, well-established rules for my kid."

This statement is meant to measure the dimension of demandingness, but different parents might interpret information technology in different ways.

For example, a parent reading this statement might search her mind and immediately recollect in terms of aggressive, anti-social behavior. She knows that her child understands that assailment won't exist tolerated, so she ticks the box in the questionnaire that says "I strongly concur."

Only what if that same parent searches her listen and comes up with a different gear up of images?

Maybe the diction of this argument makes her call back of her mother-in-law's strict rules about using the right fork, putting away all toys immediately after using them, and never going outside without shoes on?

Our parent doesn't happen to think any of those things are of import, so she judges herself to be less strict. She rates herself equally being is less agreement with the argument. Depending on what happens to come up to mind at any moment, her answer differs.

So a certain amount of fuzziness is congenital into the process. The aforementioned individual might be classified differently depending on how she compares with other parents in the study, and on how she interprets the wording of her questionnaire.

What does it matter? Do parenting styles affect child outcomes?

When it comes to child outcomes, it's hard to pinpoint causation. How can we know if it was parenting that fabricated the difference, and not another cistron?

Ideally, we would need to bear controlled experiments — randomly assigning parents to utilise a detail parenting style, and measuring long-term outcomes.

But ethical and practical considerations rule this out, then we're left with other types of evidence.

Researchers wait for correlations between parenting and child outcomes, and and then endeavor to control for other factors (like socioeconomic status) using statistical analysis.

Researchers can as well hone in on causation by tracking child development over time, and looking for show of modify. For example, if kids tend to become more anti-social over the years — fifty-fifty after controlling for their initial behavior problems — that'southward stronger evidence that a particular parenting style is at to the lowest degree partly to arraign.

What, then, take nosotros learned from these sort of studies?

• Kids from opens in a new windowauthoritative families are unremarkably well-behaved and successful at school. They tend to be emotionally healthy, resourceful, and socially-adept.

• Kids from opens in a new windowdisciplinarian families are more likely to increase aggressive or defiant behavior over fourth dimension. They are also more than probable to endure from anxiety, depression, or poor self-esteem.

• Compared with kids from authoritarian families, children with opens in a new windowpermissive parents may be less probable to feel behavior problems. They might also have fewer emotional bug. Merely these kids tend to have more troubles than children raised past authoritative parents, and they may reach less in school.

• Kids from uninvolved families are the worst off in all respects. Nigh juvenile offenders accept uninvolved parents (Steinberg 2001).

Cultural differences

Although Baumrind's ideas have been applied in places every bit varied as Brazil, Communist china, Scandinavia, Mediterranean Europe, and Turkey (Martinez et al 2007; Zhange et al 2017; Turkel and Teser 2009; Olivari et al 2015), the four basic styles don't always map onto local parenting methods.

Examples?

In a study of Korean-American parenting, researchers establish that over 75% of the sample population didn't fit into any of the standard categories (Kim and Rohner 2002).

And Ruth Chao argues that the authoritarian parenting mode—equally defined past Western psychologists—doesn't take an exact analogue in opens in a new windowtraditional Chinese child-rearing (Chao 1994).

Maybe such cultural differences can explain why different studies report unlike results.

For instance, in the United states of america, researchers ordinarily confirm that children with permissive parents tend to have poorer outcomes than do kids with administrative parents. Simply this blueprint may non hold elsewhere.

opens in a new windowA written report of Spanish adolescents found that kids from permissive homes were too-behaved and well-adjusted as were kids from authoritative homes. And an international study reported that permissive parenting outcomes were as good as authoritative outcomes — and sometimes they were even better (Calafat et al 2014).

In addition, it's likely that the impact of a parenting style depends on whether or not a way is perceived to be normal or mainstream. For case, being raised by a controlling parent is more strongly associated with poor outcomes in communities where such parenting is considered singular (Lansford et al 2018).

Merely there is notable consistency when information technology comes to comparison authoritative parenting to authoritarian parenting. Beyond cultures, authoritative parenting is consistently linked with opens in a new windowbetter child outcomes.

In a recent, international meta-analysis of 428 published studies, researchers found that authoritative parenting is associated with at least one positive outcome in every region of the globe. By contrast, disciplinarian parenting is associated with at least 1 negative kid result (Pinquart and Kauser 2018).

Maybe it's considering administrative parenting is associated with a packet of individual practices that are, on balance, more likely to produce independent, achievement-minded, socially-responsible, well-adjusted people.

And maybe it depends–at to the lowest degree in part–on the culture of the classroom. When schools are run along administrative principles, kids from authoritative families may have an easier fourth dimension understanding and meeting their teacher's expectations (Pellerin 2004).

It's also likely that your child'southward peer groups accept an influence. As Laurence Steinberg and his colleagues have argued, peer pressure tin weaken the beneficial effects of the authoritative parenting mode (Steinberg et al 1992).

What if two parents disagree, and prefer unlike parenting styles?

Some people wonder well-nigh consistency. If, for example, one parent insists on being permissive, should the other conform? Or are kids better off having at to the lowest degree one authoritative parent?

Anne Fletcher and colleagues asked this question in a study of American loftier schoolhouse students. They plant that teens were generally better off having at least one administrative parent–even if the other parent was permissive or authoritarian (Fletcher et al 1999). Then in this case, having an authoritative parent was more of import than having parents present a united front.

So does parenting fashion explicate everything? What about other influences — like peers? What virtually the child'southward temperament or personality?

A parent'southward mode is of import. But it's just one influence of many.

For instance, a study tracking the behavior of Swedish adolescents found that authoritative parenting was linked with less frequent use of alcohol. But kids were also influenced by peers, their previous involvement in runaway behavior, and the availability of booze (Berge et al 2016).

It's also clear that genetics, prenatal atmospheric condition, and temperament play a major role in child development. Only why are these factors then powerful? In role, it'due south considering they shape the way we respond to children.

For instance, consider a baby with a hard, excitable temperament. For reasons that accept cipher to do with the parenting he has received equally an baby, he is especially impulsive and prone to temper tantrums.

But as he gets older, his parents detect it hard-going. His behavior isn't fun to bargain with. It puts them in a bad mood, and they before long notice that most of their interactions are negative. They might double down and become more than punitive and authoritarian. Or, when that fails, they might feel helpless, and give up trying to enforce standards.

Either way, the child's temperament has influenced the fashion the parents behave. They might take intended to practice authoritative parenting, but their child's temperament nudged them off track. It isn't only the parents that influence the kids. The kids also influence the parents.

We tin can see evidence for this two-fashion influence in a study that tracked about 500 boyish girls for a year (Huh et al 2006).

At the beginning of the study, the researchers measured the girls' externalizing behavior bug (eastward.g., picking fights and engaging in acts of defiance). They also asked girls about the style their parents attempted to monitor them and enforce rules. At the end of the study, researchers repeated their measurements.

The results?

Initially low levels of parental control didn't have a significant effect on a girl'southward subsequent development of externalizing beliefs problems.

But initially loftier levels of misconduct were a significant predictor of decreasing parental command over time (Huh et al 2006).

In other words, parents were more than likely to surrender–finish trying to control their kids–if their kids were more aggressive or hard to begin with.

As the authors annotation, this doesn't hateful that parents with more hard kids should requite up. But it suggests that some kids are intrinsically more than difficult to handle, and their behavior problems may push parents into bad habits.

To assist such families, counselors need to accost the behavior of both parents and kids (Huh et al 2006). And parents need advice tailored to their child'south temperament.

For more information, meet these opens in a new window tips for handling confusing behavior problems.

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More reading about parenting styles

Interested in administrative caregiving? I offer more insights and advice in these articles:

• The authoritative parenting style: An testify-based guide
• Positive parenting tips:Getting amend results with humor, empathy, and diplomacy
• Aggressive behavior problems: 12 evidence-based tips

In add-on, you tin learn more almost disciplinarian parenting from these Parenting Scientific discipline manufactures:

• Authoritarian parenting style: What does it look like?
• Authoritarian parenting: What happens to the kids?

Here are my articles nigh permissive parenting:

• Permissive parenting: An show-based guide
• The permissive parenting style: Does it always do good kids?

And bank check out these, related Parenting Science offerings:

• The health benefits of sensitive, responsive parenting
• Oxytocin affects social bonds — can nosotros influence oxytocin in children?
• The science of attachment parenting

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References

Baumrind D. 1966. Furnishings of authoritative parental control on child beliefs. Kid Development, 37(4), 887-907.

Baumrind D. 1991. The influence of parenting style on adolescent competence and substance use. Journal of Early Adolescence xi(1): 56-95.

Berge J, Sundell K, Öjehagen A, Håkansson A. 2016. Role of parenting styles in adolescent substance utilise: results from a Swedish longitudinal cohort study. BMJ Open up. six(1):e008979

Calafat A, García F, Juan M, Becoña E, Fernández-Hermida JR. 2014. Which parenting fashion is more protective confronting adolescent substance use? Evidence within the European context. Drug Alcohol Depend. 138:185-92.

Chao R. 1994. Beyond parental control; disciplinarian parenting way: Understanding Chinese parenting through the cultural notion of training. Child Development 45: 1111-1119.

Chen X, Dong Q, Zhou H. 1997. Authoritative and Authoritarian Parenting Practices and Social and Schoolhouse Functioning in Chinese Children. International Periodical of Behavioral Development, 21(4): 855-873.

Darling N and Steinberg L. 1993. Parenting style as context: An integrative model. Psychological Bulletin 113(three): 487-496.Garcia F and Gracia Due east. 2009. Is always authoritative the optimum parenting fashion? Show from Spanish families. Adolescence 44(173): 101-131.

Fletcher AC, Steinberg L, and Sellars EB. 199. Adolescents' well-being as a office of perceived interparental consistency. Journal of Marriage and the Family 61(three): 599-610.

Huh D, Tristan J, Wade Due east and Stice E. 2006. Does Problem Behavior Elicit Poor Parenting?: A Prospective Study of Adolescent Girls. Journal of Boyish Inquiry 21(2): 185-204.

Kim G and Rohner RP. 2002. Parental Warmth, Command, and Involvement in Schooling: Predicting academic achievement amidst Korean American adolescents. Journal of Cantankerous-Cultural Psychology 33(2): 127-140.

Lansford JE, Godwin J, Al-Hassan SM, Bacchini D, Bornstein MH, Chang L, Chen BB, Deater-Deckard K, Di Giunta 50, Contrivance KA, Malone PS, Oburu P, Pastorelli C, Skinner AT, Sorbring Eastward, Steinberg L, Tapanya S, Alampay LP, Uribe Tirado LM, Zelli A. 2018. Longitudinal associations between parenting and youth adjustment in twelve cultural groups: Cultural normativeness of parenting as a moderator. Dev Psychol. 54(2):362-377.

Maccoby EE and Martin JA. 1983. Socialization in the context of the family: Parent–child interaction. In P. H. Mussen (ed) and E. Thousand. Hetherington (vol. ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 4. Socialization, personality, and social evolution (fourth ed., pp. i-101). New York: Wiley.

Martínez I, García JF, and Yubero South. 2007. Parenting styles and adolescents' self-esteem in Brazil. Psychol Rep. 2007 Jun;100(three Pt ane):731-45.

Pinquart Grand and Kauser R. 2018. Do the Associations of Parenting Styles With Behavior Problems and Academic Achievement Vary by Culture? Results From a Meta-Analysis. Cultur Divers Ethnic Minor Psychol. 24(1): 75-100.

Steinberg Fifty. 2001. We know some things: Parent-adolescent relationshgips in hindsight and prospect. Journal of research on boyhood xi(1): 1-nineteen.

Türkel YD and Tezer E. 2008. Parenting styles and learned resourcefulness of Turkish adolescents. Adolescence. 43(169):143-52.

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