Styles of Parenting | Which One is the Best?

Before discussing styles of parenting and which one is the best. Let’s have a look at what parenting is and why positive parenting is important?

“Parenting is the procedure of supporting and promoting a child’s social, intellectual, physical and emotional development throughout their childhood.”

Anyone who is playing a meaningful role in a child’s life is a parent, which includes biological parents, step-parents, siblings, foster parents, adoptive parents, or even any relative.

Positive parenting is using the parenting procedure to help a child develop disciplined behavior while maintaining a friendly relationship. It’s a sweet spot between strictness and freedom.

Why positive parenting is important? Because it not only helps in building a healthy relationship between children and parents, but it’s very much important in making a child more physically and emotionally strong, happier, and optimistic.

Now, come to the point!

Each individual tends to have a different parenting style. Researchers have done a lot of research on how parenting style affects a kid’s behavior.

In psychology, parenting styles are usually based on Diana Baumrind’s theory, who was a developmental psychologist at the University of California, in the 1960s.
Diana observed different types of behaviors in preschoolers and found out that parenting styles have a huge impact on children’s behavior.

Parenting styles are categorized into 4 types:

Table of Contents

1- Authoritarian Parenting:

This is the type of parenting, where parents are way too strict and unresponsive.

They have an expectation of blind obedience.

Authoritarian parents set really high and unrealistic expectations from the kids but the outcome becomes the opposite.

These parents end up having a grown-up child with low self-esteem and poorer social skills.

Their kids show lower academic performance and may have any sort of mental illness at the later stage of the life.

2- Authoritative parenting

These parents are warm and responsive. They set high expectations from children but they support them too.

The authoritative style of parenting is based on support and values of independence.

These parents set clear rules and explain the reason for the rules. They spend a lot of time and energy creating a positive bonding with the child and preventing problems before they even start.

Children of authoritative parents are more likely to be confident and responsible human beings. They show better academic performance and are more comfortable in expressing their opinions.

3- Permissive Parenting

Permissive parents are also warm and responsive, but they are quite lenient too.

They encourage their children to talk to them but they don’t help them understand the difference between right and wrong. They adopt a forgiving attitude, saying “kids are kids”.

Permissive parents don’t bother bad behavior of kids and let them do whatever they want.

The usual outcome is an egocentric child.

Children of Permissive parents are more likely to become a person with poor social skills and low self-esteem. They are less likely to show better academic performance.

These children may encounter more problems in relationships because of having very bad self-control.

4- Neglectful (Uninvolved) parenting

As the name suggests, uninvolved parents are “uninvolved” in their children’s life.

They expect their children to raise on their own. Children may not get any attention or guidance from their parents.

This is not always the case that these parents do not love their children.

The situation is more likely to be that Uninvolved parents do have some kind of mental issues or maybe their workload is the issue. These parents might be fighting any sort of depression or abuse.

But whatever the situation is, neglectful parents, raise their children as “neglectful parents” in the future. Children may become a person with very low self-esteem.

They are more prone to mental issues in the future and perform very poorly in their academic challenges.

Which Parenting style is the best?

Researchers, psychologists, and psychiatrists recommend “Authoritative parenting” is the best style of parenting.

This style is more commonly used in parenting books written by experts.

But the case is that none of the parenting styles is 100% best.

There are several situations where parents need to change their style of parenting.

A very involved parent may become very neglectful. A strict parent may become permissive or authoritarian depending upon the situation.

There are several factors like Child’s own behavior, religion, culture, and environment. Sometimes a very polite parent may become harsh because the kid’s nature is not accepting “softness”.

So, it depends!

Still, Authoritative parenting is the best practice.

Every parent must try to adopt this style at first and change the style as per the factors but this change of behavior should be temporary. A parent should return to the “authoritative parenting style” after handling the situation.

Following a single parenting style is not as simple as it looks. Here are the top 50 tips to become the most positive and authoritative parent.

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