INTRODUCTION
Good parenting is parenting that prepares children to meet the demands of the specific culture or subculture in which they live.
DIMENSIONS OF PARENTING:
• Acceptance/ Responsiveness
Refers to the extent to which parents intentionally foster individuality, self-regulation, and self-assertion by being attuned, supportive, and acquiescent to children's special needs and demands.
• Demandingness/ Control
Refers to the claims parents make on children to become integrated into the family whole, by their maturity demands, supervision, disciplinary efforts and willingness to confront the child who disobeys.
PATTERNS OF PARENTING STYLES:
1. Authoritarian parenting
Children of authoritarian parents tended to be moody and seemingly unhappy, easily annoyed, relatively aimless, and not very pleasant to be around.
2. Authoritative parenting
The common thinking is that authoritative patterns of parenting style is best for child development. But it may vary according to culture and societal changes.
3. Permissive parenting
Children of permissive parents were often impulsive and aggressive, especially if they were boys. They tended to be bossy and self centered, rebellious, lacking in self control, rather aimless and quite low in independence and achievement.
4. Uninvolved parenting
The worst developmental outcomes were associated with a neglectful, uninvolved style of parenting. Children of neglectful parents are notable for behavioral problems such as agression and frequent temper tantrums as early as age three.
LEMASTER'S LISTING OF PARENTING STYLES:
• The martyr
The parent as martyr face some problems like, the goals of martyring parents set are impossible to carry out and the parents always feel guilty.
• The police officer
• The pal
The parent as pal style points out that there are some relationship risks. If things do not go well, parents may want to restract to a more formal, authoritarian style of parenting. But once they have established a buddy relationship, it is difficult to regain authority.
• The teacher counsellor
They put the needs of the child above the parent's needs.
• The atlethic coach
This style recognizes that parents, like coaches have their own personalities and needs. Once individual become parents, they remain in this role the rest of their lives.
MERIT AND DEMERITS OF PARENTING STYLE
What kind of parenting style help children become happy about themselves and friendly with others? How this parenting styles affect children in their later life? The outcomes of any given parenting style on any given child depends on many factors that interact with each other, including the child's age, sex, and temperament; the parents personality characteristics, personal history, economics circumstances; the needs of all family members; and the values of the culture.
• Authoritarian parenting styles generally lead to children who are obedient and proficient, but they rank lower in happiness, social competence, and self-esteem. They lack social competence as the parents generally predicts what the child should do instead of allowing the child to choose by him or herself. The children also rarely take initiatives, they are socially withdrawn and look to others to decide what's right.
• Authoritative parenting styles tend to result in children who are happy, capable, and successful. Children who have been raised in authoritative homes score higher on a variety of measures of competence, social development, self perceptions, and mental health.
• Permissive parenting often result in children who rank low in happiness and self regulation. These children are more likely to experience problems with authority and tend to perform poorly in school. Permissive parents allow children to make many of their own decisions at an age when they are not yet capable of doing so. The children tend to have high self-esteem and good social skills but are more prone to problem behavior. Accepting responsibilty is difficult for many of them.
• Uninvolved parenting style rank lowest across all life domains. These children tend to lack self control, have low self-esteem and are less competent than their peers.
Children develop best when they have love and limits. If they are indulged or neglected and given little guidance, they won't learn self control and may become quite selfish, unruly, and lacking in direction. If they receive too much guidance, they will have few opportunities to learn self-reliance and may lack confidence in their decision-making abilities.
ISSUES IN PARENTING STYLE
The incompability of the parenting role with the working role is but one source of frustration for fathers and mothers trying to raise their children. At least five reasons for frustration, which is associated to parenting, might be identified:
1. Parenting today requires one to learn attitudes and techniques that are different from those of one's parents
2. Parents today rear their children in a pluralist society, characterized by diverse and conflicting values. Parents are only one of several influences of children, others are: schools, peers, TV, movies, music, books, and travel.
3. Parents feels anxious and guilty about their performance
4. Changing goal from one best technique to another
5. Society does not offer parents much psychological or social support
SOCIAL CLASS AND PARENTING STYLES
High sosioeconomic status (SES) families afford their children an array of services, goods, parental actions, and social connections that potentially redound to the benefit of children and a concern that many low SES children lack access to those some resources and experiences, thus putting them at risk for developmental problems.
Parenting styles are shaped in part by socioeconomic factors. Middle class and lower class parents often pursue different goals and emphasize different values in raising their children. Compared to middle and upper class parents, lower and working class parents tend to: (1) stress obedience and respect for authority; (2) be more restrictive and authoritarian more frequently using power assertive discipline; (3) reason with their children less frequently; and (4) show less warmth and affection.
One explanation for the link between economic factors and parenting styles focuses on the skills needed by workers in different occupations. Parents from lower socioeconomic groups may quite sensibly emphasize obedience to authority figures because their job demands it. Middle and upper class parents may reason with their children and stress individual initiative, curiosity and creativity more because these are the attributes that count for business executives, professionals, and other white collar workers. Both middle- and lower- income parents have devised styles of parenting that are well adapted to the distinctive demands of their socio-cultural setting.
CHANGING PARENTING STYLES
Recent research proved that a child’s behaviour influences the style of parenting his or her parents use. A child effects model of family influence highlights instances in which children influence their parents rather than vice versa. Child’s antisocial behaviour elicit coercive and ineffective parenting style from parents at the same time that ineffective parenting style elicit antisocial behaviour from the child, it becomes hard to say who is more influential.
Like fashions seem to go in cycles. Yesterday’s parents feeling their own parents were too strict, turned to self-demand schedules, child-centred homes, progressive education and more indulgent concepts of child rearing. Now some parents are worried that today’s children are too spoiled so are reacting to what they feel has been over permissiveness. It is evident that parenting styles change from one generation to the next and that, parents often have to sort out conflicting advice.
CONCLUSIONS
Society often assumed that parenting came naturally and parents just knew what to do when it came to discipline, nurturing, toilet training, esteem building and so forth. This perception is slowly changing. Today’s parents are quicker to acknowledge that they don’t always have the answers or that they may not want to raise their children as they were raised. Societal changes have made it more difficult to rely on parenting techniques from the past.
The rapid pace at which these changes occur, leave children facing issues their parents never dreamed of. The root cause of most of the mental health problems of children and adolescents are related with parenting styles adopted in their families. So the parents should be more aware of the different parenting styles and their impacts on child development.
The parenting style needs change according to the societal changes. Awareness regarding parenting style is very important in modern parenting. Even most of the functions of families have been taken over by other societal institutions; parents remain the major socializers of their children. Thus their style of parenting has important consequences for society.
Parenting style is an important factor in child development. Socio-emotional development of the child is influenced by the type of parenting style used in families. Parents, teachers and the mental health professionals must give more importance to the parenting styles and the society has to sort out steps to aware the parents regarding its importance.
IMPACT OF PARENTING STYLES ON CHILD DEVELOPMENT
Mary Venus Joseph
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