Parenting

 Parenting is a very controversial topic. There are many different opinions on what the best way would be to parent your kids. There is “gentle parenting” that has caught a lot of attention recently. There is also the psychologic four different kind of parenting. It can be hard to know what the best way is to parent your kids. There is also not one way that is the best it depends on your family circumstances. 

First, I am going to discuss the different types of parenting from a phycologist point of view. The first type of parenting is authoritative. This is said the be the “best” kind of parenting. According to my developmental psychology textbook (The development of the Lifespan by Laura Berk) say that authoritative parenting is “involves high acceptance and involvement, adaptive control techniques, and appropriate autonomy granting. Authoritative parents are warm, attentive, and sensitive to their child’s needs. They establish an enjoyable, emotionally fulfilling parent–child relationship that draws the child into close connection.” This allows children to learn responsibility and consequences while still have a loving and healthy relationship with their parents. 

The next type of parenting is permissive parenting. According to my textbook permissive parenting is “warm and accepting but uninvolved. Permissive parents are either overindulgent or inattentive and, thus, engage in little control. Instead of gradually granting autonomy, they allow children to make many of their own decisions at an age when they are not yet capable of doing.” These parents give all the responsibility to their children too fast. This can cause them to not be able to handle all the things that are throw at them. It can cause the kids to feel extremely overwhelmed with all of the tasks that they have to accomplish. 

The third type of parenting is authoritarian parenting this is a very controlling type of parenting. My textbooks says that authoritative parenting is “low in acceptance and involvement, high in coercive control, and low in autonomy granting. Authoritarian parents appear cold and rejecting. To exert control, they yell, command, criticize, and threaten.” This doesn’t give the children adamant responsibility to be able to gain responsibility but there is a bad relationship with their parent because they try to control their lives so much. 

The last type of parenting is uninvolved. According to my textbook uninvolved parenting is “combines low acceptance and involvement with little control and general indifference to issues of autonomy. Often these parents are emotionally detached and depressed and so overwhelmed by life stress that they have little time and energy for children. At its extreme, uninvolved parenting is a form of child maltreatment called neglect.” This type of parenting does not give the child enough attention to grow their relationship. 

One of the biggest types of parenting in the media right now is gentle parenting. This is parenting style that “relies on empathy, understanding and respect.” This creates and interesting relationship between parents and children. In my opinion these “gentle” parents let their kids walk all over them and do whatever they want because they don’t want to hurt their feelings or make them upset. In the article, the collapse of parenting: Why it’s time for parents to grow up, it says “But many kids are actually overpowering their parents. That’s the problem, say those working in child development. A functional family unit hinges on the one social construct that contemporary society has been working hard to dismantle: hierarchy. “You need a strong alpha presentation to inspire a child to trust you and depend upon you,” says Neufeld of parents. “If we don’t have enough natural power then we’re hard-pressed to [make] the demand or [set] the limit” for children. “The parent always has to be honored as the ultimate person,” he continues. “We need to put parents back in the driver’s seat.” I think that this explains the parenting situation in a lot of homes. 

Learning about the different kinds of parenting can be overwhelming but it is important to remember that you do not have to be perfect all of the time and you can be a combination of different types of parenting. In the end you just have to do the best that you can with the situation that you are in.