Which of the following parenting styles is associated with the most favorable outcomes for children?

Parenting Styles

A parenting style consists of several elements that combine to create the emotional climate in which parents communicate their attitudes and practices about childrearing with their child. Within the context of their style, parents express their attitudes toward children’s responsibilities and engage in a variety of specific parenting practices such as spanking, ensuring children are doing their homework, and involvement in children’s activities. Parenting styles convey parents’ overall feelings about the child through body language, tone of voice, emotional displays, and quality of attention. Parenting styles are often considered as traits due to their consistency across time and context, this consistancy in interaction patterns are apparent as early as the first year of a child’s life. Virtually all aspects of parenting are informed by culture, and each culture prescribes unique socialization patterns and traditions to achieve its childrearing goals. Therefore, it is important to be aware that there is no optimal parenting style for all cultures and the implications of one parenting style may vary for children from different cultural and socioeconomic contexts.

Research generally takes a typological approach to parenting styles. The most prominent contributor to parenting style research is Diana Baumrind, who conducted innovative research with predominantly well-educated, middle-SES, North American families. Baumrind’s typologies are compilations of ranges of parenting behaviors that reflect the level of control, clarity of communication, maturity demands, and nurturance exhibited by parents. Baumrind combined these dimensions to define three distinct styles of parenting: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive.

Each parenting style has a unique set of behaviors and characteristics associated with it. The first parenting style is authoritative. Authoritative parenting is characterized by a parent who demands that the child comply with a reasonable set of rules and is simultaneously responsive to the child’s needs and respectful and supportive of the child’s autonomy and individuality. The second style, authoritarian, characterizes a parent who is controlling and thus discouraging of the child’s autonomy, values obedience and limits the child’s emotional expression. The third style, permissive, characterizes a parent who fails to set restraints on the child and does not believe in punishment regardless of the child’s actions. These typologies are further elaborated below.

Building on Baumrind’s typologies, Eleanor Maccoby in collaboration with John Martin tested the generalizability of Baumrind’s typologies on more diverse sets of populations. They conceptualized parenting styles as being assessable along two separate dimensions, responsiveness and demandingness. These dimensions combined to produce four parenting styles similar to Baumrind’s typology: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and (a newly added type) indifferent. The first dimension, demandingness, refers to parental control and the degree to which the parent expects the child to exhibit maturity and responsibility. For example, demandingness is expressed in terms of parental supervision, disciplinary efforts, and willingness to respond to the child if he or she disobeys. The second dimension, responsiveness, refers to how child-centered and warm the parent is. Responsiveness promotes the child’s individuality and is exhibited in behaviors that are receptive, supportive, and compliant to the child’s individual needs and demands. Having analyzed parents along these dimensions, Maccoby and Martin found that authoritative parents score high in demandingness and responsiveness, authoritarian parents are high in demandingness but low in responsiveness, permissive parents score high in responsiveness but low in demandingness, and indifferent parents score low in responsiveness and demandingness (see Figure 1).

Parenting Styles

A parenting style consists of several elements that combine to create the emotional climate in which parents communicate their attitudes and practices about childrearing with their child. Parents' styles reflect attitudes toward discipline and parental responsibilities, as well as establish expectations for children. These are conveyed through parental body language, tone of voice, emotional displays, and quality of attention, in addition to the content of what parents say to their children and their overall behavior toward them. Tracing the conceptual development of parenting styles research, Darling and Steinberg (1993) suggest that parenting styles ought to be considered within the context of how parents' behaviors and practices impact child development. Such impact is a function of parents' values and socialization goals, their attitudes toward children, and their specific parenting practices. Although not typically described using the framework of parent-child relationships, clearly parenting styles have a direct impact on such relationships as illustrated by the following descriptions of parenting styles and their effects on child behavior.

Research generally takes a typological approach to parenting styles. We will begin by discussing the original delineation of these typologies as first described by Diana Baumrind in the 1960s. In the intervening decades, parenting styles research continued to reflect the dominant cultural Eurocentric lens that characterized idealized parenting at the time. More recently, studies of underrepresented populations have provided additional information about the extent to which dominant culture parenting styles may or may not apply to African American, Latinx, Asian American, or American Indian/Alaska Native families.

Baumrind's research into the antecedents of child behavior led to the description of three distinct styles of parenting: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive, which reflected qualitative differences in the manner in which parents demanded and facilitated behavioral control based on their beliefs about their role and their expectations of children (Baumrind, 1967). Building on Baumrind's typologies, Eleanor Maccoby, in collaboration with John Martin, tested the generalizability of Baumrind's typologies across families experiencing a broader range of socioeconomic conditions (Maccoby and Martin, 1983) and subsequently distinguished a fourth parenting style, indifferent. Rather than qualitatively distinct categories, they conceptualized parenting styles as being measurable along two orthogonal dimensions, responsiveness and demandingness. Responsiveness in the context of parenting styles, promotes the child's individuality and is exhibited in behaviors that are sensitive, supportive, and receptive to the child's individual needs and demands. It is distinguished from traditional definitions of parental sensitivity by its intentional focus on recognizing the child's individuality. Demandingness refers to the nature and level of parents' maturity demands as well as the degree to which they are willing and the manner in which they choose to act as socializing agents in their children's development. For example, demandingness is expressed in terms of parental supervision, disciplinary efforts, and willingness to respond to the child if he or she disobeys. Maccoby and Martin found that authoritative parents score high in demandingness and responsiveness, authoritarian parents are high in demandingness but low in responsiveness, permissive parents score high in responsiveness but low in demandingness, and indifferent parents score low in responsiveness and demandingness.

11 Caregiver perception and cultural influences as a core component in evaluating behaviors

Parenting style, belief systems, and the perception of the impact of behaviors is highly influential in determining what interventions may be most appropriate or best tolerated by a family. Some individuals may perceive a behavior as highly problematic, some may perceive the same behavior as only problematic in certain situations, while others may not find that same behavior problematic at all. A family's prioritization of comorbid medical issues or perceptions regarding what expected behaviors should be exhibited by an individual with Down syndrome may also impact interpretation of behavioral problems and implementation of treatment strategies.

Cultural attitudes and beliefs regarding parenting of a child with Down syndrome may further impact whether a caregiver feels emotionally distressed by their child's diagnosis and comorbid behavioral challenges or not. In one study, a South African Muslim community was interviewed to assess the beliefs and practices of caregivers of individuals with Down syndrome and the traditional healers with whom they consulted. Findings highlighted the importance of using culturally sensitive intervention practices (Dangor & Ross, 2006).

The importance of considering cultural factors is further expounded in a study evaluating how cultural attitudes affect inclusion for children with intellectual disabilities (Gaad, 2004). Another study evaluating parental attitudes toward behavioral problems in individuals with Down syndrome in India found attitudes of overindulgence for mothers and neglect for fathers (Bhatia, Kabra, & Sapra, 2005). While these findings are important to consider, the implications and possible treatment approach may be different in Western countries where similar attitudes may or may not be present.

Another study assessed the attributes, emotions, and responses to problem behaviors in Latina mothers of children with moderate to severe intellectual disability. Researchers found that most mothers did not feel that their children were responsible for the behaviors they exhibited. Those that did attribute personal responsibility to the child were more likely to report negative emotions and react in a harsher way (Chavira, López, Blacher, & Shapiro, 2000).

Research within the Down syndrome population is still limited when evaluating specific parental perceptions, belief systems, and the influences of culture on behavioral interpretation. While these issues in assessment of behavior may not be unique to Down syndrome, they are critical to consider when evaluating behavioral challenges within the Down syndrome population.

Parenting styles

Different parenting styles may be an important contextual factor in terms of adolescent development. Parenting styles have been conceptualized into four different categories (authoritarian, authoritative, indulgent/permissive, neglectful) that range on levels of responsiveness and control. Authoritarian parents tend to take a more unresponsive, or parent-centered role, and are generally demanding while exerting a high level of control over their children. Their adolescent children tend to be dependent, submissive, and overly conforming in the presence of their parents and other authorities. However, when out of the presence of authorities, these adolescents tend to be rebellious, defiant, hostile, and resentful. In contrast to authoritarian parents, indulgent/permissive parents tend to take a more responsive, or child-centered role, and are generally undemanding while exerting a very low level of control over their children. Adolescent children of indulgent/permission parents tend to lack self-regulation skills, and often disregard rules and regulations. Because they are used to getting their way, they generally are not as socially adept as other adolescents. Neglectful parents are generally unresponsive to their children, while also being undemanding and showing little control. Adolescents who grow up in these families tend to suffer the most as they may get into a lot of trouble and engage in more risky behavior. These adolescents also tend to be self-rejecting and may feel inferior to others. In contrast to neglectful parents, authoritative parents are responsive, accepting, and child-centered, while also setting clear limits for their children. This authoritative parenting style has been found to be associated with more positive adolescent developmental outcomes. Adolescents from these families tend to be more socially and academically competent. They also exhibit higher levels of self-esteem and demonstrate more person control than other adolescents. It is important to note that these parenting styles are not always completely independent of one another. Parents may mesh different styles together and/or use different styles with different children. Interestingly, even within the same family unit, parents may be utilizing completely different parenting styles. For example, an indulgent/permissive mother, paired with an authoritarian father, may cause an adolescent to experience a great deal of uncertainty and confusion.

Parenting Styles

Specific parenting styles are also likely to have a part. Intense affect and preoccupation with the child and overprotectiveness have been reported in children with severe FSS, more so than in parents of children with other chronic physical disorders or with emotional disorders (Rangel et al., 2005). This might be compounded by parental “disease conviction” or overemphasis on possible medical causes for the symptoms, and it may impede children and adolescents in developing active coping mechanisms. Thus, longitudinal population research has also shown that overprotective parenting increases the level of somatic symptoms experienced by adolescents (Janssens, Oldehinkel, & Rosmalen, 2009).

Vulnerability Factors—Family Factors

Theoretically, parenting style is often described as an important factor in the development of anxiety disorders in children. Empirically, the association is consistently confirmed, but found to be modest with specific styles like parental control being more important than parental rejection (McLeod, Wood, & Weisz, 2007). To date, the research on parenting in SM is sparse with conflicting results which may mainly be due to different assessment methods. The four existing comparative studies using different self-report measures on parental behavior do not find group differences in any aspect of parenting style. Three of them include healthy children as controls (Alyanak et al., 2013; Buzzella, Ehrenreich-May, & Pincus, 2011; Cunningham et al., 2004), while the fourth study compared SM children with both healthy controls and children with SAD (Yeganeh et al., 2006).

However, when the parental behavior is assessed by clinician rated interview or observation, the parents of children with SM are reported to be more controlling than the comparison groups (Buzzella et al., 2011; Edison et al., 2011; Nowakowski et al., 2011). In the study of Buzzella et al. (2011), the clinician rated the mothers of SM children to show greater monitoring of their children’s activities compared to mothers in the community comparison group despite the lack of group difference in self-report on parenting style. Two studies used observational methods of parent–child interactions during different tasks (free play; talking about the child’s last birthday; informing the child of a coming speech performance; talking about their last birthday in front of a camera so that other children could later watch the tape and hear all about it) and found that the SM dyad showed fewer episodes of joint attention during the structured tasks (Nowakowski et al., 2011), and more parental control (granting less autonomy and making more power remarks) compared to controls (mixed anxiety and community controls) through all tasks. Higher child and parental anxiety predicted more control (Edison et al., 2011). The interpretation of these results has to be careful as the data are correlational and cannot say anything about cause and effect. The expectation of speech and the speech performance in itself are expected to elicit a high degree of anxiety in children with SM and SAD, and possibly in many of their parents as well. Finally, Specific Phobia was the most frequent diagnosis in the mixed anxiety control group and for these children speech tasks may not be a challenge.

Parenting

Parenting factors, such as parenting style and parent psychopathology, are also thought to increase children’s vulnerability to develop a phobia. Relative to the parents of nonclinical children, the parents of anxious children have been shown to have a more intrusive and overprotective parenting style (Breinholst, Esbjørn, Reinholdt-Dunne, & Stallard, 2012; Gar & Hudson, 2009) and to be more accommodating of their child’s avoidance and distress (Lebowitz, Scharfstein, & Jones, 2014). Parents of anxious children also tend to be more restrictive of their child’s engagement in age appropriate activities (e.g., going to a sleepover) and be more likely to intervene when their child is in a new, challenging, or anxiety provoking situation and encourage avoidance (Bögels & Brechman-Toussaint, 2006; Hudson & Rapee, 2001, 2002). Parent intervention in anxiety provoking situations and accommodation of child avoidance may serve to reinforce children’s fears, and prevent them from obtaining new learning that their feared outcomes do not occur, and that they can cope in anxiety provoking situations. Parent anxiety and other types of psychopathology may also increase the risk of a child developing a phobia via modeling and reinforcement of anxious behaviors (Bögels & Brechman-Toussaint, 2006; Dadds, Barrett, Rapee, & Ryan, 1996). Furthermore, parent instructions and behaviors in anxiety provoking situations may communicate to a child that a situation is dangerous and thus should be avoided (Bögels & Brechman-Toussaint, 2006).

1 Parenting Styles

Considerable attention has been paid to the role that parenting styles may play in children's food consumption. Originally proposed by Fisher and Birch (1999) and expanded upon by Hughes, Power, Orlet Fisher, Mueller, and Nicklas (2005), parent feeding styles are reported to align with Baumrind's parenting styles to include authoritarian, authoritative, and indulgent or uninvolved. The domain that has received the most attention is the role that authoritarian styles, or restrictive practices, play in the development of children's eating behaviors. Children who are told to “clean their plates” tend to be less sensitive to satiety cues (Fisher & Birch, 1999).

The relation between parenting styles and child food consumption appears to be indirect. In a review of the parenting style literature, Ventura and Birch (2008) make the distinction between parenting styles and feeding practices. Parenting styles are considered a cluster of behaviors and attitudes that extend across multiple contexts of social interaction. Parenting practices, particularly feeding practices, are specific behaviors meant to socialize children. Ventura and Birch propose that in terms of food consumption, parenting styles moderate the effects of parenting practices. In their review of 66 studies, the vast majority of which were cross-sectional, parenting practices were found to be related to child eating behaviors. Pressure to eat was more likely to be associated with picky eating while restrictive feeding practices were more likely to be associated with increased intake of palatable foods and eating in the absence of hunger. However, as the authors point out there is limited longitudinal data and scant attention paid to the role that the child plays in affecting parenting practices. For example, if a child is overweight, it is reasonable to expect that a parent may adopt a more restrictive feeding practice with the intent of limiting the child's portion sizes. Indeed, there is some longitudinal evidence to suggest that children at risk for obesity based on parent weight are more likely to gain weight over time if their parents also engage in more restrictive feeding styles (Faith et al., 2004).

In sum, the dyadic exchange between parent and child may influence food consumption indirectly through feeding practices that parents adopt. To date, the vast majority of the work in this area has been cross-sectional limiting statements that can be made about the causal nature of parenting style and feeding practices in affecting child food consumption. Curiously, scant attention has been paid to the intersecting roles of family climate and characteristics of the child and parent may play in affecting parenting style. The broader developmental literature suggests that parenting style may be influenced by individual characteristics of the parent, including depression and overall family climate, such as rules for emotional expression (Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers, & Robinson, 2007). Thus, parenting styles and practices are also embedded within the larger ecology of the clan. We now turn our attention to the role that family routines, specifically family mealtimes, may play in regulating food consumption.

Parenting Styles and Adolescent Adjustment

Parenting style is associated with a wide array of developmental outcomes in adolescence, including academic achievement, risk behaviors such as substance use and delinquency, and psychological adjustment (psychosocial maturity, self-esteem, and depression). Adolescents with authoritative parents score highest on measures of social competence, high on measures of self-confidence, and are least likely to engage in antisocial behaviors such as delinquency and drug use. These adolescents do better in school and subsequently report higher academic achievement in college and an easier time adjusting to college life. They also show higher levels of self-reliance and self-esteem and report less depression and anxiety. These positive developmental outcomes are likely due to the characteristics associated with this parenting style. Parents who are able to set firm limits on their children's behavior while maintaining a warm and supportive environment may foster both accurate perceptions of parental messages (owing to their clarity, consistency, and appropriateness for the child's developmental level) as well as acceptance (through the warm relationship which encourages children to identify with parents and their values). These parents seem to be the most capable of tailoring their parental demands and expectations to the changing developmental needs of adolescents. Authoritative parents seem able to adjust their expectations to fit new experiences, allowing the adolescent to develop and express their sense of autonomy while still maintaining close relational ties to parents who remain a critical source of emotional support and guidance.

Authoritative parenting can be broken down into its underlying dimensions of warmth/acceptance, firmness, and psychological autonomy granting to examine their common and unique effects on adolescent outcomes. Such research has revealed evidence of overlapping effects but also some differences. All the three components are associated with better psychosocial development and academic performance. However, firmness is especially important for limiting problem behaviors such as substance use and delinquency, whereas psychological autonomy granting is especially useful for protecting against internalized distress such as anxiety and depression, a pattern of findings similar to those discussed earlier regarding parenting dimensions.

Research on adolescents with authoritarian parents demonstrates that they tend to be quieter and more withdrawn than the children of permissive or authoritative parents. They score higher on measures of conscientiousness, likely stemming from socialization experiences that actively foster anticipating and meeting the demands of authority figures, and lower on measures of self-esteem. Adolescents of authoritarian parents may be very motivated to accurately perceive parental messages in order to avoid disciplinary measures by parents, and to uncritically internalize parental standards so that they feel more warmth and acceptance from parents, thus helping to account for the higher measures of conformity and conscientiousness these adolescents display as adults. Because it instills relatively high levels of conformity, authoritarian parenting might be viewed as the most successful parenting style for socialization; however, children raised in this way do not develop the strongest levels of social competencies or self-reported happiness and show higher rates of internalizing disorders, such as depression.

In contrast, adolescents with permissive parents tend to score high on measures of self-confidence, and report a high frequency of both drug abuse and misconduct in school. Unlike the children of authoritarian parents, adolescents of permissive parents seem less concerned with parental or adult needs and expectations and more oriented toward peer expectations and approval. These teens score higher on measures of behavioral dysfunction, and lower on social competence measures, than those raised by authoritative or authoritarian parents. It is unlikely that permissive parents are transmitting strong messages about values they wish their adolescent to adopt, or that these parents are fostering an environment in which adolescents would be prompted to accept such messages.

Adolescents of disengaged parents have the least positive developmental outcomes. Ignored or rejected by parents, these children have higher aggression levels in early childhood, and their behavioral problems continue to worsen in adolescence, when they often display hostility, selfishness, and rebellious attitudes. They tend to lack long-range goals and are more likely to engage in antisocial and delinquent behaviors such as alcohol and drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and truancy. Adolescents with disengaged parents tend to have low academic grades and test scores. While other parents are actively trying to teach boundaries and build skill sets, and are showing warmth to their adolescents, disengaged parents are failing to foster social, academic, and emotional capabilities in their adolescents. These adolescents are likely to flounder early, and continued indifferent parenting exacerbates their problems.

Parental Feedback Theory

This theory suggests that parents adjust their parenting style as they move from the firstborn to later-borns. This adjustment is not out of financial or attentional necessity, but out of increasing comfort and decreasing anxieties. The result is that parents are less demanding of later-borns, especially with regard to their school performance. Beyond the firstborn, parents may allocate their love and approval in a manner that is less contingent on the child's achievement.

In one of the few experimental studies examining the transmission of birth-order effects, Hilton (1967) observed how mothers treated children in a laboratory setting. In the waiting-room, firstborn children were observed to remain physically closer to their mother, often holding on for security. After the children returned from a putative ‘testing session’, mothers were told that their child had performed extremely well or extremely poorly – based strictly on random assignment. Observation via a one-way mirror revealed that mothers of firstborns gave contingent feedback: if told their child performed well, mothers coddled and praised the child. If told their child performed poorly, mothers berated the child. Later-borns, however, received non-contingent treatment: mothers responded to the child as they had before the testing session – regardless of performance feedback.

It is easy to see how such differential treatment could set off rather different developmental trajectories for firstborns and later-borns. In firstborns, superior intellectual achievement should be accompanied by several personality traits: they should possess higher achievement motivation, a greater concern with approval from parents and subsequent authorities. In turn, such qualities may well diminish their popularity among peers. The need for approval from authorities should also engender more conservative political attitudes in firstborns.