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The Effects of Parenting Styles
By Shanna Holt
Salt Lake Community College
PSY- 1010 General Psychology / PSY- 1100 Human Growth & Development
Spring 2013
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The Effects of Parenting Styles
I.
Introduction: There are four different parenting styles, and each greatly impacts
children in different ways.
II.
Research 1: An experiment to test the impact of parenting styles and locus of
control on emerging adults' psychosocial success.
III.
Research 2: There were several other articles included in my extensive research on
this subject, the results of which I will describe, although they are not actual
experiment descriptions like the first.
IV.
Conclusion: Children are greatly impacted both positively and negatively by the
different parenting styles their parents use. They affect how children think, feel, and
behave. Parents shape their children through the way they parent and that is important
to remember.
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The Effects of Parenting Styles
It is no secret that parents are a big and critical part of a child’s development. Parents are
the adults that raise their children, teach them right from wrong, how to behave, and ultimately
how to become functional adults. While most everyone can agree on the importance of parents,
not everyone realizes the actual impact the parenting style can have on the child.
There are four basic parenting styles: Authoritarian, Permissive, Authoritative, and Uninvolved
parenting.
Authoritarian parents are strict and highly controlling. They set high standards and have
many rules that they expect to be followed. They demand obedience and respect from their
children, as well as maturity and overall good behavior. Authoritarian parents consider
themselves the highest authority in the home and don’t like their authority questioned.
Authoritarian parents love their children but rarely show affection.
Children with Authoritarian parents tend to be quiet, obedient, and stay out of trouble.
They often feel guilty and depressed, internalizing their frustrations. They lack self esteem,
confidence, spontaneity, and curiosity. They tend to be socially withdrawn and have difficulties
forming relationships. As adolescents, they sometimes rebel, leaving home before age 20.
Permissive parents are warm and accepting but exert little control over their children.
They make very few demands of their children and don’t really expect maturity from them.
There is usually a great deal of parent-child communication but these parents exercise very little
discipline. These parents consider themselves more of a friend than a disciplinary figure. They
are very supportive of their children, but they don’t feel responsible for shaping them.
Children with permissive parents are impulsive and lack self control. They tend to be
selfish and immature because they’re not taught how their actions affect others, which often
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leads to trouble forming relationships. Also, they tend to achieve less at school. They usually
maintain a good relationship with their parents into adulthood.
Authoritative parents are firm but kind. They set limits and use natural consequences to
help their children learn. They set high standards and encourage independence. They demand
maturity but are more forgiving than punishing if the child does something wrong. Authoritative
parents consider themselves more as guides rather than authorities or friends.
Authoritative parenting proves to give the best outcomes. Children with authoritative
parents tend to be cheerful, self-controlled, lively and self-reliant. They have good self
confidence, are achievement orientated and socially successful. They tend to cope well with
stress and regulate their emotions well. Also, teachers and peers usually like these children.
Uninvolved parents demand little from their children and respond very minimally to
them. They set few if any rules for their children, and offer very little in terms of communication
or encouragement. These parents don’t know what their kids are doing and seem not to care.
Sadly, this parenting style is often associated with neglect and abuse.
Children with uninvolved parents are socially withdrawn and lack self esteem. They are
not securely emotionally attached to their parents and this leads to confusion and depression.
Many of these children exhibit antisocial behavior and may end up as criminals. This parenting
style has the worst effects on children out of all the parenting styles. The combination of
permissiveness and indifference or rejection in varying degrees has detrimental effects on
children.
These different parenting styles are not necessarily a definite foretelling of how every
child will turn out depending on the parenting style they are subject to, but it still has an
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exponential impact on children’s developing personalities and behavior that affects them for the
rest of their lives.
The first study demonstrates this through an experiment on undergraduate college
students. Specifically the study’s purpose was to test the impact of parenting styles and locus of
control on emerging adults' psychosocial success. The experiment included 334 participants, all
undergraduate students between the ages of 18-25. The experiment consisted of a series of
carefully written questionnaires the participants were required to fill out. The questions asked
participants to analyze their mother and father separately on each of the categories, and answer
different questions in regards to each of the parenting styles except for Uninvolved parenting
which wasn’t observed by the study as an actual parenting style.
The experiment tested for three hypotheses:
1.
In the case of both mothers and fathers, authoritative parenting will be associated with
greater psychosocial success in children than authoritarian or permissive parenting.
a. This hypothesis was strongly confirmed by the results of the experiment.
2.
In the case of both mothers and fathers, authoritative parenting will be associated with a
more internal locus of control in children than authoritarian or permissive parenting.
a. Overall, this hypothesis was partially supported. It was confirmed in the case of
mothers but not fathers.
3.
Locus of control will moderate the impact of parenting style on psychosocial success in
emerging adults. In particular, permissive parenting will interact with locus of control to
lower psychosocial success in both males and females. Authoritarian parenting, on the
other hand, will interact with locus of control to enhance psychosocial success.
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a. This hypothesis was supported in the case of fathers. Locus of control moderated
the relation between paternal parenting style and psychosocial success such that
authoritarian parenting enhanced psychosocial success, whereas permissive
parenting diminished it.
Possible problems with this experiment are that the data was collected from a single
source. Also, parenting styles can change over time, so the recollections of the participants may
reflect their parents’ current parenting style, not the style they may have had years before. Also
this experiment tested college students, not young children like most of my research was based
on.
As you can see parenting has a crucial impact on children’s growing and developing
minds. It can either be very beneficial or greatly detrimental to their development. The way a
child thinks, feels, and behaves are all influenced by the way parents raise them. “Children
everywhere benefit if they believe that their parents appreciate them; by the same token, children
everywhere suffer if they feel rejected and unwanted.” (Berger, Kathleen Stassen. Invitation to
the Life Span. New York: Worth, 2010. Print.) It is important for parents to realize the great
power and responsibility they have in shaping their children.
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Cited Sources
 Berger, Kathleen Stassen. Invitation to the Life Span. New York: Worth, 2010. Print.
 Gurian, Anita. "Parenting Styles/Children's Temperaments: The Match |
AboutOurKids.org." Parenting Styles/Children's Temperaments: The Match. NYU Child
Study Center, n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2013.
 "Effects Of Parenting Style." Effects Of Parenting Style. All-About-Motherhood.com,
n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2013.
 "Impact of Parenting Styles and Locus of Control on Emerging Adults' Psychosocial Success."
Impact of Parenting Styles and Locus of Control on Emerging Adults' Psychosocial Success.
Journal of Education and Human Development, n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2013.
 Sailor, D. H. "Effects of Parenting Styles on Children's Behavior (page 2)." Effects of
Parenting Styles on Children's Behavior. Education.com, n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2013.
 Moore, Ayra. "The Impact of Parenting Styles on Children's Development."
LIVESTRONG.COM. N.p., 12 Sept. 2011. Web. 02 Apr. 2013.