Parenting 101: The 4 Types of Parenting Styles
Getting It Right
One of my favorite sayings about parenthood is, “There’s no one way to do it right. But there are definitely some ways to get it wrong.”
We all love our kids, and want to do what’s best for them. But to be honest? Parenting is so much harder than it looked before we actually had kids.
Hence the constant searching for better, easier ways. Looking for parenting hacks, and tricks and tips.
So, I have a good news-bad news situation for you.
First the good news. Parenting hacks are awesome! They’re completely awesome for little things like figuring out how to keep shampoo out of kid’s eyes when I’m washing their hair. (Dry handtowel over the face. Feel free to try it.)
The bad news? There’s no hacking your way to being a better parent.
But don’t despair! There’s more good news! The steps are straightforward. We just have to clear out some mental space, and get back to basics.
The best way to do that is to learn from those who have gone before us. People have been parenting for as long as we’ve existed. It’s kind of why we still exist as a species. So we have the amazing advantage of learning from millennia of parents!
But since we don’t have a ton in common with our cave people ancestors, or even most of the ancient empires, I’d prefer to bring things a little closer to home. With family research done in the past few decades!
Family Research on Parenting
Family research has shown us time and again that there is a way to optimize our parenting to help our kids achieve their full potential.
Full potential.
I love that. I’m pretty sure that’s the best we can do for our kids. Period.
The 4 Types of Parenting Styles
There are 4 different parenting styles that are supported by family research (full credit- these were originally created by Diana Baumrind). They are Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive, and Neglectful.
They’re defined by the two characteristics of demandingness and responsiveness.
Demandingness
Demandingness is having healthy expectations of your kids. If you have high demandingness, your family probably has an established set of rules, chores, and general expectations for your kids. Your kids may feel that a lot is being asked of them.
If you have low demandingness in your house, your kids may not have a lot of responsibilities, or there’s an attitude of “whatever they can do will be fine.” It may be coupled with a sense of “I don’t care what they do. I can’t change it anyway.”
Responsiveness
Responsiveness is essentially whether or not you are emotionally available and present for your kid. If you’re a parent who frequently says things like, “I see that you’re frustrated. Let’s problem solve this,” chances are you’re pretty darn responsive.
Or you may pay attention to non-verbal cues, and be able to tell their needs, like hunger, sleep, or just the need for a break, by their actions. Those examples would both be of parents with very high levels of responsiveness.
Low responsiveness may sound like, “Well what do you want me to do about it?” (In a sort of snarky tone.) Or just not noticing when your kid comes home and is looking kinda forlorn; or noticing and doing nothing about it. It could also look like staring at your phone or computer, and not engaging with you kiddo, even if they’re in the same room.
The 4 types of parenting styles are just the different combinations of low and high demandingness and low and high responsiveness.
So, let’s dive into the different parenting styles in a little more detail.
What is the Authoritative parenting style?
Description: Authoritative parenting is defined as having high demandingness and high responsiveness. In this style, you have healthy expectations of your kid, which are balanced by your responsiveness to their needs. For example, you could have the expectation that they do the dishes after dinner. But you know they’re under the weather tonight, so you give them a pass.
Pros: Authoritative parenting is pretty much the gold standard of parenting. Hands down, kids have the best outcomes with this type of parenting. That means that in the long-run, kids who were raised with Authoritative parents are:
• Happier
• Have less mental health problems
• Perform better in school
• Are more independent
• Have overall good self-esteem
Cons: There really aren’t any. Unless, maybe, you consider that this isn’t your natural parenting style and it’s something you have to put energy into daily?
But that doesn’t really seem like a con to me- it just sounds like parenting. Parenting is hard, but it’s important. Why not do it well?
What is the Authoritarian parenting style?
Description:
This style of parenting has very high demandingness, with very low responsiveness. It’s a dictator-like style of parenting. Kids have to do what you say, and you don’t care how it makes them feel.
Pros:
You’re going to find a theme that there aren’t a lot of positives from parenting styles that aren’t Authoritative.
I could dive into a whole point/counterpoint thing about obedience being an outcome of Authoritarian parenting. And it can be. But my personal stance is that it can also be a result of Authoritative parenting, with the benefit of other positives. Yes, kids need to learn obedience to get through life. But there are better ways to accomplish this.
Cons:
Kids of Authoritarian parents don’t live in a nurturing world. Having high demands isn’t an intrinsically bad thing. After all, Authoritative parents also have high demandingness. The problem is that there’s no aspect of responsiveness, or warmth, to balance it. Kids with Authoritarian parents may have lower self-esteem, more mental health problems, challenges making connections with others, and do more poorly in school. (FYI- the comparison is always to kids who have Authoritative parents.)
What is the Permissive parenting style
Description:
Parents who have low demandingness and high responsiveness fall into this Permissive style. There are a million examples of this, but one of the best I can think of is from Harry Potter. I’m specifically thinking about the Dursley’s.
If you’re not familiar with the series, there’s an aunt and uncle who place absolutely no demands on their son, Dudley, and indulge his every whim. As you may expect, Dudley is a bully and the epitome of a spoiled brat.
This example is pretty extreme, and they would be pretty far out on the spectrum of parenting styles. But I figured it was best to stick with a fictional example.
Pros:
Sometimes, at least in western cultures, this can seem like the easy route to take. It’s the path of least resistance. Maybe our kids are whining in the store, so we cave and get whatever they were whining about. (No judgement- we’ve all been there. But it’s a bad habit to get into). When we do things like this, we’re not placing demands on them, like good behavior, but we are highly responsive to their wants (because we’re giving them whatever they’re whining about). It’s not a winning recipe.
So the pro is that it makes life easier for you as the parent. It’s not a pro for the kid. Weird pro. I was stretching for that one.
Cons:
The consequences for parenting with a permissive style is having kids who are entitled, who may have poor self-control, who are less independent, and who lack tenacity and resiliency. They haven’t been raised to be able to problem-solve on their own, and may continue running back to you to ‘fix things.’
Permissive parenting is such a sneaky style, because it lures us in. We can think that we’re doing the right thing because we’re responding to our kids needs. They’re happy, after all.
And even low demandingness can sneak up on us, appearing as an attitude of “It’s fine- it’s faster if I just do it myself.” We all know that we could do the tasks we give our kids better and faster. But that’s not the point.
The point is to place those demands on our kids to teach them critical life-skills. And while they’re learning and growing they get a chance to develop their self-esteem!
What is the Neglectful parenting style
Description:
Neglectful parenting is pretty straight-forward. Low demandingness and low responsiveness.
It’s pretty easy to think of examples of the extreme of this style.
So I’d challenge you to think about what it’s like more toward the center of the continuum.
What if we re-framed this as “Uninvolved” instead of “Neglectful”?
Neglectful parenting can come around in some benign ways. Maybe you’re crazy busy with work or other things during this season of your life, and you just don’t have time to spend with your kid. It’s possible that you don’t even share the same house as your kid. Or you could be fighting your own battle with mental health. For whatever reason, you are just unable to show up for your kid.
And because your time of being with your kid- physically or mentally- is limited, it’s easy not to engage. They may have their physical needs provided for, but you don’t have time to either respond to their needs or check that your expectations are being met. Everyone is just coasting. But not in a good way.
Pros:
I don’t think I can write a single positive about this one.
Cons:
Abundant. This is hands down the parenting style that produces the most negative outcomes for kids. These kids have the worst school and mental-health outcomes. Essentially, they feel unloved and unsupported, and will act out accordingly.
Examples of the 4 Types of Parenting Styles
Examples are always a nice way to really see a concept in action. So let’s explore how a parent from each of the 4 types of parenting styles might respond to a typical challenge.
Please, know there is no judgement here. We can’t run a race until we find the starting line. If you see yourself in any of these examples, just know that’s where your starting line is!
Let’s pretend that you’re getting ready to make dinner. You’ve just told your kids you need 20 minutes to put everything together, so you need them to play nicely together without you until you call them for dinner.
No less than 5 minutes later- while your hands are covered in chicken (of course!)- they start screaming. The older one is bossing the younger one, and the younger one is literally just shrieking. You think you hear that they’re fighting over a toy. Again. (I should also establish in this scenario that they are actually old enough that the expectation they play together for 20 minutes without your intervention is developmentally appropriate.)
Neglectful parent:
You feel completely irked that you’re trying to make dinner –for them– and they can’t even follow one simple request. You turn up your music or podcast louder, and figure they’ll just work it out between themselves. You are not getting involved in this one.
There was no follow-through on the demand that they get along, so that was low demandingness. And obviously the choice to turn up the speakers was a choice to not be responsive to their needs.
Permissive:
You sigh. It was nice hoping that they could entertain themselves, but you didn’t really think it work out. You wash your hands off right away, and go up and separate the kids. You listen to each kid attentively, give each one a hug, and ask if they would like to come over and watch tv instead while you get dinner ready. You’re pretty sure they’ll like that better, and it’ll still buy you time to make dinner.
You were responsive to their needs, but also lacked any follow-through on the request to get along for 20 minutes, so there was a low level of demandingness.
Authoritarian:
You walk over to your kids, yell at them for not being able to play together even for just a few minutes. You grab the toy, and take it with you, saying, “If you can’t share it, no one gets it.”
In this example, note that there was not a moment when you tried to understand the scenario and what was going on (low responsiveness). You were focused on the rule-breaking (high demandingness).
Authoritative:
You listen carefully for 2 more minutes. You know in the past they’ve worked things out before. It becomes apparent to you that the situation is escalating, and they are not going to do that this time.
You wash your hands off and go to your kids, calmly. You ask for each kid’s perspective, and essentially find out this is a sharing problem. The younger one grabbed the toy, the older one grabbed it back, and is now refusing to share (and is giving a diatribe about why s/he shouldn’t have to). You help them calm down and ask each of them how they could’ve handled the situation better. You give them the chance to apologize to each other, and then calmly- but firmly- enforce the consequence for screaming at their siblings/not sharing. You then return to making dinner.
Which parenting style is the most effective?
Hopefully, by now it’s obvious that the answer is, emphatically, Authoritative.
Kids with Authoritative parents have the best outcomes. There is a balance between having expectations placed on them, so they have the opportunity to grow and develop self-worth. And the knowledge that home is a safe place to land. A kid with these sort of advantages couldn’t help but grow to their full potential!
But it can also be the most challenging of the 4 types of parenting styles for the parent to master. In the examples, you may have noticed that there was no easy way out for the Authoritative parent. The other parents went to their kids (or not) and dealt with the problem quickly. In order to maintain the Authoritative parenting style, that mom will need some exceptional self-care skills.
The Wrap-Up
So now you know the basic parenting styles, and that there are really only two factors you need to measure your parenting with. Responsiveness and demandingness. It’s really as basic as that!
So take another look at the examples, and see if you can figure out which areas you might need to work on.
Let me know in the comments which of the 4 types of parenting styles you naturally gravitate towards! What steps do you take to move towards being a more Authoritative parent?
And make sure to sign-up for our weekly(ish) newsletter so you can be on the lookout for our upcoming articles about self-care, and raising your levels of demandingness and/or responsiveness.