- Parenting styles describe the climate in which the functionality of a family and the child rearing strategies that occur. They define the set of behaviors that are involved in different generations of life.
- It may also involve the relationships between members of two or more generations and can pass on to other aspects of life.
- Parenting styles require much support of the children as they define the interaction between the parents and children at different stages in life.
- These styles are differentiated through the way the impact the development of children from the early childhood stages to the adolescence stage (Reitz, Dekovic, and Meijer, 2006).
The four different styles of parenting include:
- Authoritative,
- authoritarian,
- permissive or indulgent and
- uninvolved
- The styles are determined through the way parents support them and the strict control that reflect the mandate over their children’s behavior. These styles also portray the characteristics and effects that are involved during adolescence (Reitz, Dekovic, and Meijer, 2006).
A). Characteristics of Parenting Styles
- Parenting styles relate to the development of children at all stages but it requires authoritative parenting to shape and guide an adolescent. Adolescence is a part of life where children go through changes in their biological, psychological, cognitive and social aspects. It is a stage where children transform from the actions of childhood behavior to adults points of behavior. The adolescence stage brings about stressful moments as children are not aware of the changes taking place and it requires the parents to fully understand these.
- Uninvolved parents are never available in the lives of their children; they only portray interests in themselves and neglect their children. Research has indicated that uninvolved parents only think about their own activities and the teenagers might be impulsive as they are mostly self-regulated. For instance, if the parents are smokers the adolescents are likely to obtain that behavior as there is genetic and environmental influence on the development of teenagers. Parenting has a huge impact on the smoking traits of teenagers as the traits are passed on from one generation to another (O’Connor et al, 1998). Parenting styles may also indicate instances where characteristics have developed during earlier stages of development including one to two factors that can promote or hinder optimal development (Darling & Steinberg, 1993).
- Permissive parenting may bring about negative effects that hinder optimal growth in the way children react during development stages. These effects include children being emotionally attached to their botanical parents than the adopting parents. It may hinder the way the teenagers develop. The early stages of this development include huge and important genetic influences on temperament. The characteristics of parenting skills and effects on development during adolescence have a huge role in this as their traits are passed on to their children where some may be over-reactive to the situations that occur in their children (Darling & Steinberg, 1993).
Summary
It is true that the way parents bring up their children may have impacts on the way children behave but this does not occur in all instances. Permissive parenting styles are not always soft and parents use it as a way to cooperate with their children in a more friendly way. Authoritative parenting may at times lead to adolescence engaging in negative activities such as smoking as the adolescents seem defiant. It also brings about negative relations with their children. Therefore, it is necessary for parents to adopt all parenting styles in order to coordinate their children’s activities as well as theirs (Slee, Campbell & Spears, 2012).
References
Andrew Collins, W. W. (2005). Parsing Parenting: Refining Models of Parental Influence During Adolescence. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 70 (4), 138-145
Darling, N., & Steinberg, L. (1993). Parenting style as context: An integrative model. Psychological Bulletin, 113 (3), 487-496
Liem, Joan H.; Cavell, Emily Cohen; Lustig, Kara (2010). The Influence of Authoritative Parenting during Adolescence on Depressive Symptoms in Young Adulthood: Examining the Mediating Roles of Self-Development and Peer Support. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 171 (1), 73-92.
O'Connor, T. G., Deater-Deckard, K., Fulker, D., Rutter, M., & Plomin, R. (1998). Genotype– environment correlations in late childhood and early adolescence: Antisocial behavioral problems and coercive parenting. Developmental Psychology, 34 (5), 970-981. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.34.5.970
Reitz, E.; Dekovic, M.; Meijer, A. M (2006). Relations between Parenting and Externalizing and Internalizing Problem Behavior in Early Adolescence: Child Behavior as Moderator and Predictor. Journal of Adolescence, 29 (3), 419-436.
Slee, P. T., Campbell, M., & Spears, B. A. (2012). Child, adolescent and family development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
