In one of the courses I teach we spend some time going over types of parenting – Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive/Indulgent, and Uninvolved/Neglectful. We discuss how different cultures look at these parenting types. In America, the Authoritative approach tends to be focused on as “optimum”.
While I don’t disagree conceptually with the authoritative approach being optimum, one thing that has always stood out to me is that it seems to imply there is a “perfect” parent: always fair, always firm, expectations in line with maturity, etc. I question if a person can always be this type of parent. Have you ever reacted to something your child has done and gone more into the Authoritarian style? I certainly have. I feel I go into Permissive at times as well. Being a great parent is a lot of work and the ease of being a laid back parent is enticing. So while there may be an optimum parenting style, I find it hard to believe that if we fall into another style every now and then that damage will be done (except maybe Uninvolved parenting – they can do long term damage in a short time).
A bigger issue is that children are all different and need different things. An “optimal” parenting style assumes that all kids will respond and react to that style in the same way. But is that true? Do boys and girls require the same things from their parents? What about shy children and aggressive children? I’ve always found the concept of consistency across the board for all children to be a strange concept.
Today I was blessed with some new research that puts me at ease. It was published this month in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. The study found that a one-size-fits-all approach to parenting is not the best for long-term outcomes in children. Basically, the risk of a child having depression and/or anxiety increases if parenting style did not match their personality. Children who were less able to regulate their actions needed more structured parenting, while kids who had good emotional control did better when they experienced autonomy.
One could argue that an Authoritative parent would do this – adjust as needed to be the best parent possible. But I know that the parent I am to my 3 kids is not always the same. My calm and mature for her age daughter and my wild and rambunctious son have to be regulated differently. That seems a no-brainer to me, but I was glad to see that research is backing up my thinking!