What Are the Different Parenting Styles and What Does Research

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--Parenting styles fall into three (and later four)major categories:
• Permissive.Permissive parents tend to be lenient with their children,allowing them considerable freedom inside and outside the household.They use discipline sparingly,if at all,and often shower their children with affection.
• Authoritarian.Authoritarian parents tend to be strict with their children,punishing them when they don't respond appropriately to their demands.They show little affection toward their children.
• Authoritative.Authoritative parents combine the best features of both permissive and authoritarian worlds.They're supportive of their children but set clear and firm limits with them.
• Uninvolved.Neglectful parents tend to ignore their children,paying little attention to either their positive or negative behaviours.
--Outcomes: Baumrind (1991)and other investigators (Weiss & Schwartz,1996)found that children with authoritative parents tend to exhibit the best social and emotional adjustment and the lowest levels of behaviour problems,at least among Caucasian middle-class North American families.Children with uninvolved parents tend to fare the worst,and children with either permissive or authoritarian parents fall in between.But these findings do not tend to apply to collectivistic cultures.
--So what's the bottom line on parenting styles? Disappointingly,after decades of advice from parenting experts,it's hard to say all that much for sure.Still,the bulk of the research suggests that specific parenting styles may not matter as much as experts had once thought.By and large,if parents provide their children with what Heinz Hartmann (1939)termed the average expectable environment-that is,an environment that provides children with basic needs for affection and appropriate discipline-most of their children will probably turn out just fine.So contrary to what they may hear from parenting gurus on Oprah,parents needn't lose sleep about everything they do or every word they say.This doesn't let parents entirely off the hook,however.If parenting falls well below the range of the average expectable environment-that is,if it's especially poor-children's social development can suffer.

What Are the Different Parenting Styles and What Does Research

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