Parenting Styles and Child Rearing

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Parenting style is very important in child rearing and can have consequences in the way that a child develops and can have long term effects on children and their personality later in life. Diana Baumrind developed her ideas of parenting styles and their effects by studying 100 preschool children and their parents. Although most of the subjects of her study were Californian middle class European Americans, thus not offering much diversity in her study, the results were very persuasive and interesting. Baumrind found that parents varied on four dimensions: expression of warmth, strength of discipline, communication, and expectation of maturity. Using these dimensions as the basis Baumrind developed three main classifications of parenting style (four classifications of parenting style if you include neglectful/uninvolved parenting style). The three parenting styles classifications the Baurmrind developed are: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative. The authoritarian parenting style is strict, with high behavioral standards for the child, they are expected to follow rules and the parent’s authority without question. Baumrind also states that authoritative parents can often be described as aloof and although they love the child they rarely show affection towards the child, as expressions of emotions are not encouraged and rare. Permissive parenting style is described as laze fair. Parents make few demands of the child, there is little behavioral discipline or expectations of the child. Parents are thought of as very nurturing, affectionate, communicative but at the same time they offer the child very little discipline or control. The third parenting style is authoritative parenting style which is described as somewhere in the m... ... middle of paper ... ...ffectionate and loving towards my mother giving her plenty of hugs and kisses, while with my father we understood that the best way to show him that we loved him was by showing him respect. When we called my mother it was with loving and endearing terms such as “mom” or “mommy” while my dad was addressed by “sir”. I believe by having these two types of parenting styles we learned to conduct ourselves differently around different people. We learned that certain behaviors were only tolerated in certain situations, with certain people, which I think has been very helpful in life. We learned that there was a time and place for behaviors and we learned to decipher these by observing our parents and their behavior. After reading about the differences in parenting styles I believe that I grew up to be well adjusted individual despite the parenting styles my parents used.

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