To Celebrate Parent’s Day: Parenting Styles

Parent’s Day is officially celebrated on the 4th Sunday of July. This day celebrates parenting with events that appreciate, educate, and encourage parents as they struggle and work to guide their children in life. In that spirit, let us investigate parenting styles.

Four Basic Parenting Styles

There are currently four basic parenting styles identified by psychologists:

1. Authoritarian parents establish strict rules and rigidly enforce them. They expect unconditional obedience, and usually punish their children for disobedience.
2. Authoritative parents also establish rules, but tolerate more questions from their children. Their goal is for the child to understand why the rules exist and why they should choose to follow them, rather than to extract blind obedience.
3. Permissive/ Indulgent parents expect much less from their children, with fewer rules and consequences for inappropriate behavior.
4. Uninvolved parents live their own lives and allow their children to do the same. They usually provide the basic needs of their children, and think their job is complete.

Other Defined Parenting Styles

Some groups define parenting goals that often blend the styles mentioned above. These styles of raising children may be based on religion, philosophy, other personal beliefs, or on raising children with specific medical conditions. Examples include:

• Attachment Parenting
• Anthrosophy
• Christian Parenting
• Feminist Parenting
• Jewish Parenting
• LDS Parenting
• LGBT Parenting
• Natural Parenting
• Parenting Children with Learning Disabilities Parenting with Disabilities
• Single Parenting
• Unparenting

Find out your parenting style

http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/quizzes/l/bl_prnt_style.htm
http://www.parenting.com/Mom/signalPatterns.jsp

For you pirates out there, there is even a Guide to Pirate Parenting.

Resources

The Four Parenting Styles
Parenting Style, Teen Drinking
Parenting Style and Its Correlates

ECU Libraries Materials