Parenting Styles: What to Do and What Not to Do

Andrea A. Pineda

Professor Lewis

English 105

13 November 2015

Parenting Styles: What to do and what not to do

Parents can either make a child or break a child. Author Mitch Albom, in his novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven asserts, “Parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.” A parent’s habits and behavior towards his or her child affects the child’s development. Some of the positive effects are life satisfaction, good academic performance, good socialization skills, and high self-esteem. On the other hand, the negative effects are depression, poor performance in school, and violent tendencies. Therefore, when parents raise their children, they should focus on encouraging their children to reach their full potential by discontinuing authoritarian parenting and replacing it with a less strict approach.

In order to simplify the parents’ response and behavior towards their children and the expectations they impose on their children, four classifications of parenting styles, authoritarian, authoritative, neglectful and permissive, were brought together by Diana Baumrind, a clinical and developmental psychologist known for her research on parenting styles. According to Joan Newman, a teacher and school psychologist in Australia before moving to the United States, as with Jocelyn M. Bennet-Garraway, an assistant professor and the Director of the M.A. School Counseling Program at the University of Detroit Mercy, authoritarian parents have firm limits and rules and regulations in the household that ought to be followed and they will punish with harsh discipline either verbally or physically for disobedience. Authoritarian parenting results in few behavioral problems, but is associated negatively with a child’s psychological development (Newman 265) (Mackenbach 34). Therefore,...