A Literature Review of Parenting Styles

Introduction

Parents assume a critical role in child development. Uma Devi (2003) revealed that most parents feel that the adolescent years are the most difficult and challenging period of child care and upbringing. Despite the rapid transformation of the modern family, the development of a healthy personality and emotionality of a child is subject to parental discipline. Emotional intelligence is viewed as an assortment of abilities and traits. Twenge (2001) perceives emotional intelligence as a range of skills that contribute to accurate expression and appraisal of emotions. According to Mayer and Salovey (2000), emotional intelligence, a society acquired capability, is correlated with emotional, physical and social well-being, social competence, popularity, and self-monitoring. The article argues that among the critical factors in the development of emotional intelligence are parenting styles and the ability of children to perceive them.

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As Bandura (1986) opines parenting as the parent's attitude towards the children and it encompasses three features or dimensions, involvement, autonomy support, and warmth. Involvement refers to the degree to which parents are knowledgeable, participative and interested in the life of the child, whereas autonomy support is the value the parents assign to their child's perspective and the approaches employed to foster self-initiation, choice, and participation in decision-making. Lastly, warmth is the extent to which parents are sensitive, responsive and dutiful to their children. Most explorations have focused on the relationship between emotional intelligence and different styles of parenting. These investigations concluded that the authoritative parenting style is an accurate predictor of emotional regulation, whereas warmth correlates with a greater degree of emotional regulation and intelligence, as well as the use of emotions.

Twenge (2001) considers parenting style as an aggregation of attitudes of parents towards a child, which are developing an emotional climate that the behaviors of parents are expressed. Aquilino and Supple (2001) address three styles of parenting, which include permissive, authoritarian and authoritative. Authoritative parents are open-minded and caring to the opinions of their children, as well as provide support and directions to their kids. Indiscipline, highly responsive and undemanding are attributes of a permissive style of parenting, which gives children the freedom to make decisions on social matters. There is no direction or compulsion to children from parents. On the other hand, authoritarian parenting style is marked by highly demanding and unresponsive parents with a high expectation.

All the above styles of parenting are culturally varied with regards to characteristics. Parenting styles are defined differently based on the norms of a given ethnic group (Uma Devi, 2003). For instance, authoritarian and permissive parents are linked to negative behavioral and psychological outcomes. Similarly, Pong et al. (2005) established that there is a powerful connection between authoritative parenting and academic achievement. These scholars revealed that the parenting style depicted a positive correlation with student performance and school grades among European American learners although the findings were different among Asia American students.

The working class and the economically deprived parents tend increasingly to stress respect and obedience for authority. These parents are more authoritative and restrictive, employ power-assertive discipline, and demonstrate less affection and warmth for their children. Most middle-class parents are power assertive and highly restrictive. Generally, it seems that parents from the working class and low socio-economic status are more punitive, intolerant and critical to disobedience in comparison to their counterparts from the middle and upper classes.

Lamborn and Woods (1999) believe that socio-economic status is the most critical determinant of the level of cognitive development in children. Kids from the middle socioeconomic status demonstrate high social competence with those from low social-economic status tends to have higher behavioral/emotional problems. Similarly, children from big cities tend to depict higher problems in emotional and social areas, although parental rejection or acceptance is less affected by socio-economic status, family size, and rural-urban difference.

Twenge (2001) explored the relationship between the moral maturity of children and parental disciplinary, establishing links between class and gender differences among children with moral maturity. Among children from the upper class, assertion and induction were negatively and positively correlated to oral maturity, respectively, among boys with their counterparts only depicting significant relationship in the first former. He further examined the impacts of intelligence, anxiety and socio-economic status, and established that the mother and child's education status positively influenced adjustment and intelligence of the child.

The disciplinary approaches employed by parents to socialize children have a significant effect on personality development. The scholar considers the education of the mother is a more influential factor than employment status in child rearing. Educated parents adopt punishment and reward strategies and tend to foster greater independence and vocalization, as well as they are more strict and suppressive of children's aggression. As such there is indifference between economic classes in the emotional and educational adjustment of children.

According to Lamborn and Wood (1999), authoritative parents' children score highly on psychological competence measures and low in behavioral and psychological dysfunction, which is the reverse performance of neglected children. Authoritarian parents are strict, dominating and punishing, and they expect their children to be obedient, submissive and dependent on them. In such environments, children tend to be rebellious, hostile and aggressive with signs of emotional disturbances.

Authoritarian parenting has more long-term and adverse outcomes to males than females. Boys reared through authoritarian parenting tend to depict low scores in social and cognitive competence. Their intellectual and academic performance is usually poor and demonstrates a low level of friendliness, initiative, and self-confidence among their peers. Verma (1990) contend that children subjected to protectiveness, high control, conformity, deprivation of privileges, social isolation, permissiveness and nurturance rejection demonstrate more alienation unlike their counterparts from the low control. Vema adds that the mix of nurturing, warm parenting and high behavioral standards contribute to the development of responsible, competent, confident and independent children.

Conclusion

In conclusion, supportive, emotionally supportive and warm parents invest in more socially and academically competent child-rearing and their children are less likely to demonstrate behavioral problems, unlike their counterparts who are less engaged and nurturing. Children lack the capacity to cope with stress when their parents are less emotionally responsive and emotionally disturbed. The findings reveal that parenting styles have a tremendous impact on the emotional, social and intellectual development of children. Children raised by either authoritative parent are more socially skilled, confident and depict low behavioral problems than those raised by authoritarian or permissive parents. Consequently, it can be concluded that parental restrictive behavior is an accurate predictor of the social metric status and behavior of the child.

References

Aquilino, W.S., & Supple, A. J. (2001). Long term effects of parenting practices during adolescence on wellbeing out comes in young adulthood. Journal of Family Issues, 23 (3), 289-308.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action. A social cognitive theory. Englewood cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Lamborn, & Woods. (1999). Pattern of competence and adjustment among adolescents from authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent and neglectful families, Child Development, 59 (2), 356-366.

Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (2000). The intelligence of Emotional Intelligence. Intelligence, 19 (4), 433 - 442.

Pong S.L., Lingxin, H., Erica, G.: The roles of parenting styles and social capital in the school performance of immigrant Asian and Hispanic adolescents. Social Science Quarterly. 86, 928-950 (2005)

Twenge, J. M. (2001). Changes in women's assertiveness in response to status and roles: A cross-temporal meet-analysis, 1931-1993. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81 (1), 133-145.

Uma Devi, L. (2003). Ph.D., Unpublished Thesis. Emotional Intelligence and personality profile of adolescents. Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University, Hyderabad.

Verma, B, P. (1990a). Dimensions of home environment and adolescents alienation, Progress of Education 17 (2), 30-33.