Parenting Styles: The Candy Aisle
Many people have heard of the different styles of parenting: permissive, authoritative, authoritarian, and neglectful. What these actually look like within a family is a little less clear. I’m going to explain these four different parenting styles and provide an example about what these might look like in a situation. To make it easy, we can think about parenting styles based on how they differ in two areas, warmth and structure.
Permissive: Parents are typically warm and loving, concerned with making sure their children remain happy and feel loved. In contrast, they usually lack follow through and do not maintain boundaries, meaning them are low in structure. While children have what they need in terms of love and connection, they can be uncertain about what to expect and “rule the show.”
Authoritative: These parents balance being warm and flexible with setting clear boundaries and following through on them. Children are respected and have a voice, but parents are the decision makers. Children grow up confident and are able to manage their emotions as adults.
Authoritarian: These parents use strict rules and punishments to uphold boundaries, but they struggle when it comes to providing warmth and loving connection to their children. Children are frequently well behaved and work to follow the rules but may struggle as adults when given freedom and independence.
Neglectful: Parents lack both warmth and structure. They often meet children’s physical needs but provide little in terms of nurturing or boundaries. Sometimes this takes place due to circumstances outside of parents’ control. Children can grow up overly self-reliant and have difficulty with low self-esteem and asking for help.
Okay, so now that we have a better understanding of the different styles, we can talk about how parents with different styles might react in a specific scenario. Let’s imagine that a parent and a child are at the grocery store. They walk down an aisle that happens to include the candy section. The child asks for some candy. The parent says “No, not today.” The child starts to beg and cry.
Permissive: The parent would likely give in and say, “Okay, fine you can have one, just stop crying.” It is also possible that a truly permissive parent didn’t say “No” in the first place and just avoided the argument about it.
Authoritative: This parent might move toward the child, get down low, and quietly say, “You really wish you could have some candy. It’s almost dinner time, so we aren’t going to have candy right now.” Then the parent might redirect, “Can you help me find our cereal on the shelf?” If the child continued to tantrum, this parent might take their child to the car to calm down.
Authoritarian: This parent might say, “NO CANDY! I already told you this, and if you keep this up, you’re not getting ice cream after dinner either.” The boundary is clear, but the child’s emotions (disappointment) are ignored.
Neglectful: This parent and child might not be in the store together at all. If they did find themselves in this scenario, they might be lost as to how to respond.
After those examples, it might not be surprising to hear that authoritative parenting is generally regarded as most effective at raising children to be successful, responsible adults, a claim well-backed by research. If you are interested in reading more, check out this article that covers more about research into authoritative parenting.
***See: Larzelere RE, Morris AS, Harrist AW. Authoritative Parenting : Synthesizing Nurturance and Discipline for Optimal Child Development. 1st ed. American Psychological Association; 2013.