The Four Parenting Styles

Parenting styles describe the way parents respond and react to their children. There are, generally four types of parenting styles. These are permissive, authoritative, authoritarian, and uninvolved. Contrary to what may believe, a person’s style of parenting does not speak about the level of love they have for their child. Most parents, regardless of what style they have adopted, have the same goal – to raise children to be happy, healthy, and successful adults.

It’s My Way or the Highway: The Authoritarian Parent

We’ve all heard the phrase, “children should be seen and not heard”. This was undoubtedly first uttered by someone with an authoritarian style of parenting. Parents who adopt this style of parenting give orders and expect their children to obey. There is no room for explanation or discussion. There are no choices to be made and no questions to be answered. Children in an authoritarian household are not provided with the reasons why certain rules are necessary. Instead, these parents expect adherence to the rules simply because they said so.

Parents who utilize this parenting style often give their children very little freedoms and have a strong need to control their children at all times. They typically expect high levels of achievement and are less responsive to their children’s emotional needs than parents using other parenting styles. Authoritarian parents tend to focus more on control than communication. Failure to follow the rules is often followed by strict punishment.

Growing Up in Blind Obedience: Authoritarian Parented Children

When children are primarily raised using this style, they often become obedient and responsible citizens. These children are, of course, use to following the rules. They learned quickly in childhood that rewards are reaped though achievement and compliance.  The downside to this particular style is that the children often lack proper communication and decision making skills. They often feel that their thoughts and opinions are not important as children and this feeling sometimes extends well into adulthood. Some of these children become openly defiant in an effort to assert their own controls while others assume a more submissive role toward life in general.

The authoritarian parenting style has been linked to low self-esteem in children and an inability to assume roles of leadership later in life. This style suppresses childhood creativity and certain aspects of intellectual growth. The children raised under this style often show higher rates of aggression than children raised under other styles of parenting. The poor communication within the family structure often makes is difficult for these children to seek guidance and support from their parents.