American Parenting Styles

A parent’s parenting styles are as diverse as the world we live in today. Nowadays, parents only want what is best for their children and their parenting styles plays a crucial role in the development of children which will in the long run, not only effect the child’s childhood years, but later prolong into their adult life as well.

Children do not come with guidelines or instructions. What they do come with is a crucial set of physical and emotional needs that need to be met. To raise children properly, parents duties are not limited to just food, shelter and protection. Parents are largely responsible for their children’s success in life. Parents are required to teach and educate children. They have to shape knowledge and character into their children to prepare them to face the real world. To be successful with this, parents must provide self esteem needs, teach moral and values and provide discipline that is both effective and appropriate. As the generations have changed, many parenting styles have evolved, as well.

With over three hundred million Americans and over six billion people worldwide parenting skills are essential to maintain a healthy society. Parenting involves many aspects and requires many skills. It is a time to nurture, instruct, and correct to develop fundamental skills children will need to be mature, responsible, and contributing adults to a society. There are four commonly identified parenting styles; authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved parenting. Of the four parenting styles, two remain on opposite ends of the parenting spectrum. These two styles; authoritarian, and permissive both have deleterious results that are often visible throughout different developmental stages, such as rebellious behavior. As well

Parents play the largest role in the overall development of children. During the early 1960’s, psychologist Diana Baumrind conducted experiments that were designed to identify and understand the different types of parenting. As a result of these studies, Baumrind concluded that there are four main styles of parenting, one of them being the authoritarian parenting style. In the studies, Baumrind claims that an authoritarian parent is defined as a parent who, “attempts to shape, control, and evaluate the behavior and attitudes of their children in accordance with a set standard of conduct, usually an absolute standard, theologically motivated or formulated by a higher secular authority” (Baumrind 127). Authoritarian

Parenting styles were developed by Diana Baumrind in 1966 at the University of California at Berkeley (Diana Divecha Ph.D, 2015). Baumrind used a model of demands and responsiveness to determine three types of parenting styles. These styles were authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive parenting. Because permissive parenting lacks in demand and discipline, it will not be discussed in this essay. In Baumrind’s model, demands refers to the amount of control parents exert onto and expect from their children. Responsiveness refers to how a parent nurtures and empathizes with their child. Parents with high demands and high responsiveness follow the authoritative parenting style. On

The styles that Dr. Baumrind recognized were based on two aspects of parenting; parental responsiveness and parental expectation (demandingness). The aspects are determined by the parent’s characteristics on the actions towards the children. Too much or too little of either aspect of parenting can conflict with the child’s learning and behavior. A single selection of the four parenting styles is approached after determining the degree of each of the two aspects. Although there is not a perfect match for any parent, most will tend to push towards a

Authoritative parents “set standards, but also give their child choices. They recognize the good things that their child does, but they do not overlook the bad things. These parents are more confident and nurturing. They set standards that their child can meet. Usually, this type of parenting leads to a positive self-image in the child (Black, 2008). Permissive parents “do not control their children, it is more like the other way around. There is no discipline, and the child grows up knowing they can get whatever they want. When the parent does try to discipline, the child doesn't take it seriously. These parents give in easily and avoid confrontation whenever possible” (Black, 2008). In general American parents raise their children to have an individual personality, and to be independent from a very young age. “Firm disciplines are directed toward the infant and these are gradually relaxed as the child grows” (Suzuki, 2000).

Parenting styles have been widely defined by Baumrind into three categories, authoritative, authoritarian and permissive. Parenting styles can be defined as a pattern of attitudes in how parents choose to express and communicate with their children. These styles are categorized based on the level of nurturance, parental control and level of responsiveness (Dwairy, 2004). Authoritative style exhibits high levels of demand, responsiveness and nurturance; authoritarian style exhibits high levels of demand but low levels of responsiveness, permissive style exhibits low levels of demand but high in responsiveness and nurturance (Dwairy, 2004). These parenting styles have been proposed to have a significant impact on a child’s

I was raised in the 50’s. My parents came from Europe after the war in 1948 and began a new life with just the clothes on their back. They had some family here and every holiday, birthday, and just some weekends in between we would get together. By the 70’s in was already gradually starting to shift as high school seniors were heading off all over the country expanding their horizons as they embarked on college life. After college students embarked on new adventures stating their careers away from their families. Although it seemed subtle at the time, now reflecting back it seems loud and clear change has arrived. After high school I never moved back home just like many of my friends and of course this included my cousins. Eventually my aunts and uncles also moved to different states and everyone was all over the place. To this day I miss those wholesome days and wished my child could have had that experience growing up.

Authoritarian is only one of three parenting styles that Baumrind details. The other two styles include authoritative and permissive. These two variations in parenting styles were seen in the way my relatives and friends’ parents approached parenting. I observed how the parents of my close friend handled parenting. They maintained control over aspects in my friend’s life like school and chores but allowed the freedom to make decisions in areas of social activities. The most striking difference between my parents and my friend’s is the use of reasoning and the expression of warmth. Her parents provided justification behind their commands and or punishments while maintaining a sense of love and affection. The bond and love that is evident between my friend and her parents is not as strong in the relationship between my parents and me. The style that her parents exhibit is known as authoritative because of their focus on some parental control, use of reasoning and warmth. While on the other hand, my cousins raised their children in a completely different manor using a permissive parenting style. While they provide obvious love and affection towards their children, they fail to exert control and regulations. They did not have any real sense of rules in their household. Their children tend to act and do whatever they wanted with little to no repercussions.

Family life has always been known for being variable in every country. Growing up in different times leads to different consequences and every child has to deal with them. In China, parenting has changed a lot throughout the 20th century, and it will only continue to change. Starting with the 1920s, my grandparents’ generation, the living conditions then were crude at best. Parents took on the “survival of the fittest” approach when it came to their children (Warner, 1925). What this means is that parents only took care of their best child if they could only afford to raise one. As time progressed to the 1940s-1960s, my parents’ generation, life was much happier, as parents swayed away from the initial approach

In the early 1960s, psychologist Diana Baumrid conducted a research, analyzing child-parent behavior, seeking to identify parenting styles. The Baumrid study and other further studies identified four main styles of parenting (Miller, 2010): the authoritative parenting style was characterized by fair rules and consequences; The Authoritarian parenting style was characterized by strict rules and harsh punishment; the permissive parenting style was characterized by minimal rules with little or no consequences; the uninvolved parenting style was characterized by no rules, and parent presence was almost non-existent. In this paper, I’m going to look at the authoritarian style of parenting in an attempt to draw out its characteristics and its immediate and later impacts on children impact.

In this paper, I will examine how parenting style affects an individuals relationship with his or her children. According to Baumrind, there are four main parenting styles, differentiated on levels of support and expectations. This paper focuses on parents with high support and high expectations,who are known as authoritative parents and those who are supportive with low expectations, who are are permissive. These four different styles of parenting lead to very different developmental outcomes for children in social, academic and emotional domains. However, this model does not fully explain parent-child interactions because it neglects to reference the environmental context of the relationship along with any personal differences in temperament of the child. This context introduces complexity such as personality differences, age of child and marital status of the parents. This is an important topic to investigate because of the impact parenting style can have on developmental outcomes for both the immediate child and for future generations.

Talking about multicultural societies, why is parenting style included as part of multiculturalism? Parenting styles was included as part of multiculturalism because a parenting style is like a habit, and many people define a habit as a culture. Parenting styles have been used for more than a hundred years, and every parent has their own style to teach their children based on their general behaviors. Which parenting style do you think is better between the Indonesian parenting style and the American parenting style? It is up to you. You can choose whatever style you want, and which style you think is better for you. Parenting styles in Indonesia and America have similarities; however, they have more differences that we can contrast.

“Baumrind (1967, 1971) identified three main styles of parenting”, explains Swartz, de la Rey, Duncan and Townsend (2011:65). The three main styles of parenting are authoritarian parenting, authoritative parenting and permissive parenting. Furthermore, each one of these parenting styles is associated with certain outcomes based on the behaviour of the child, the type of relationship that the child has with the parent and even the child’s self-esteem. However, according to a psychological expert Cherry (2015) “developmental psychologists have long been interested in how parents impact child development”. In brief, this might mean that, parents’ actions and behaviour have a huge impact on their child, which may cause the child to adopt the behaviour and make it a habit as they grow to be parents. So, as a parent you should always keep in mind that “your kids watch you for a living. It’s their job, it’s what they do. That’s why it’s so important to try your best to be a good role model”, declares Lehman (n.d.). I will now discuss the authoritarian