Your parenting style affects your child’s personality

Fifty years of research has established an important fact: Parenting style matters. And it’s the parenting style that most strongly affects the child’s personality.

Parenting style refers to two specific dimensions of parenting: 1) How behaviorally demanding a parent is, and 2) How emotionally responsive a parent is.

In the 1960s, psychologist Diane Baumrind documented the correlation between the parenting style children received and how they turned out as adults. Her work was later refined by psychologists Maccoby and Martin, who modified Baumrind’s research to include four parenting styles.

Although other factors also have a huge impact on developmental outcome, parenting style has been consistently shown to have a dramatic effect on long-term development. Let’s examine the four parenting styles.

Neglectful Parenting

No one would expect a positive outcome from this style of parenting — even the name gives it away. However, some parents who are engaged in this style may not even recognize it as their own. Neglectful parents may be too busy, overwhelmed, or internally distracted to attend to their children. Sometimes they’re suffering the effects of depression or trauma, or they’ve been raised by similarly distracted parents. They fail to react to their child’s feelings, either dismissing or ignoring them. As an adult, the child might report that her parents never conveyed pride in her accomplishments or failed to rescue her from a sibling’s abusive treatment.

Due to their lack of focus, these parents don’t impose limits for their children. Even if they sometimes try, they often abandon the task, finding it too hard to carry through. Schoolwork, bedtime, respect — issues that other parents care so much about — are largely ignored, and the children are left to their own devices.

Children raised by neglectful parents tend to have serious issues with self-regulation. They have trouble soothing their own distress and lack self-control, often acting out aggressively and destructively. They have difficulty adjusting to societal demands, may develop addiction and serious mental health issues, and have difficulties in adult functioning. These children are a testimony that children need parenting and cannot be left to grow up alone, without nurturing and guidance.

Permissive Parenting

Like neglectful parents, permissive parents have trouble setting rules and limits. However, these parents are emotionally responsive to their kids and offer plenty of love and affection. Unfortunately, being all-giving without being demanding produces children who become egocentric adults with poor self-control. Understandably, they have more relationship difficulties as a result of their self-centered behavior. It turns out that when parents only give, give, give, children learn to take, take, take. Children have to be taught to limit themselves to meet the needs of others, and that feelings of others matter just as much as their own.

Authoritarian Parenting

Authoritarian parents teach their children to comply with rules without regard for their feelings and needs. Discipline is not balanced by warmth, affection, and understanding. Parents are mostly directive, controlling, and businesslike.

Children growing up in authoritarian homes tend to be anxious, needy, insecure, unhappy, and socially, academically, and emotionally challenged. These results highlight the tremendous importance of emotional connectivity in parenting; focusing primarily on behavior and performance leads to poor outcomes.

Authoritative Parenting

Authoritative parents exhibit high demand plus high responsiveness, meaning they have high expectations for their child, but are also emotionally responsive. These parents enforce boundaries while offering affection, and encourage independent functioning. They say “yes” often but are willing to say “no” as well. They are not afraid to appropriately discipline their child, but tend to use more positive interventions to guide and educate.

Children raised in this parenting style tend to be happy, confident, emotionally secure, independent, academically successful, socially adept, and mentally healthy. They exhibit less depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and violence than children raised in other parenting styles.

Want to be an authoritative parent? Follow the “80-20 rule,” in which children are offered high doses of warmth and emotional connection along with smaller doses of guidance and discipline.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 623)