Parenting Styles

I’m seeing several families in my practice now with adolescent sons. Adolescence is a challenging time for kids from even the healthiest of families. It’s a time when teens begin to separate from their parents and establish themselves as individuals. To successfully transition into adulthood, teens need to learn how to take on the tasks of adult life, including job skills, relationship skills, and self- discipline.

These can be almost impossible tasks for teens from families with misguided or deficient parenting. Poorly-parented children tend to act out, rebel, isolate, or get self-destructive. The stakes for these kinds of behavior are much higher during the teen years. This is the time families show up in my office because they are in crisis. There’s plenty I can do to help.

I want to talk briefly about parenting styles, which I learned about early in my professional training and included in my typewritten thesis (this was forty years ago). Time may have passed, but these profiles are just as valid today as when I was an intern.

There are three classic parenting styles: authoritarian; permissive; and authoritative. The following definitions come directly from my thesis.

1. The authoritarian parent attempts to shape and control the behavior and attitudes of the child in accordance with a set, absolute standard of conduct. They value obedience as a virtue and favor punitive, forceful measures to curb a child’s self-will where the child’s actions or beliefs conflict with the parent’s.
2. The permissive parent attempts to be non-punitive and accepting towards the child’s impulses, desires, and actions. The parent consults with the child about policy decisions and makes few demands for household responsibility or orderly behavior. The parent offers themselves as a resource for the child to use as they wish.
3. The authoritative parent directs the child’s activities in a rational, issue-oriented manner, encouraging verbal give and take, and sharing with the child the reason behind their policy. The parent values the child’s unique abilities and cultivates a balance of autonomous self-will and disciplined conformity.

The authoritative model of parenting creates healthy families. Most people accept that flawed parenting styles like authoritarian and permissive will lead to problems for children. What many people don’t understand, however, is that kids from both authoritarian and permissive types of families can end up with very similar attitude and behavior problems. The outcomes for authoritarian or permissive parenting can be equally severe and destructive, especially for teens.

That’s what I’m seeing now in the troubled families in my practice. There’s been harshness and neglect, or pandering and overindulgence. The bottom line? Tragic difficulties for all involved.