Klinzing says parenting style alone does not determine how children will turn out, but it can be an important factor. No one will fit the description exactly, but most parents do tend to adopt one style more than the others, Klinzing says. What authoritarian parents do: These moms and dads do not encourage their children to make decisions or show any independence.

They believe what the child does is more important than why the child does it. They like their children to be seen and not heard. They sometimes mete out harsh punishment, according to Klinzing. How their children sometimes turn out: Kids who live with authoritarian parents tend to be more anxious, more withdrawn and unhappier than other kids. However, Klinzing says that when they get frustrated, it sometimes leads to anger.

Boys are sometimes defiant, and girls generally seek approval. Both genders often find it difficult to make decisions. Klinzing says these are the kids who sometimes go a little wild in college. Who We Are.

Resources for Employers. Resources for Families. Search Bright Horizons. Find a Center Locate our child care centers, preschools, and schools near you. Log in to Schedule Backup Care. I'm interested in Looking for a child care center Accessing my benefits Providing benefits to my employees Joining the Bright Horizons Team. The four Baumrind parenting styles have distinct names and characteristics: Authoritarian or Disciplinarian Permissive or Indulgent Uninvolved Authoritative These Baumrind parenting styles are United States-centric and it is not clear how well these styles describe parents cross-culturally.

They use a strict discipline style with little negotiation possible. Punishment is common. Communication is mostly one way: from parent to child. Rules usually are not explained. Parents with this style are typically less nurturing. Expectations are high with limited flexibility. Permissive Parenting Permissive or Indulgent parents mostly let their children do what they want, and offer limited guidance or direction.

Their discipline style is the opposite of strict. They have limited or no rules and mostly let children figure problems out on their own. Communication is open but these parents let children decide for themselves rather than giving direction. Parents in this category tend to be warm and nurturing. They want their children to be assertive as well as socially responsible, and self-regulated as well as cooperative. The combination of expectation and support helps children of authoritative parents develop skills such as independence, self-control, and self-regulation.

Permissive parents , sometimes referred to as indulgent parents, make very few demands of their children. These parents rarely discipline their children because they have relatively low expectations of maturity and self-control. According to Baumrind, permissive parents "are more responsive than they are demanding. They are nontraditional and lenient, do not require mature behavior, allow considerable self-regulation, and avoid confrontation. In addition to the three major styles introduced by Baumrind, psychologists Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin proposed a fourth style: uninvolved or neglectful parenting.

An uninvolved parenting style is characterized by few demands, low responsiveness, and very little communication. While these parents fulfill the child's basic needs, they are generally detached from their child's life.

They might make sure that their kids are fed and have shelter, but offer little to nothing in the way of guidance, structure, rules, or even support. In extreme cases, these parents may even reject or neglect the needs of their children.

What effect do these parenting styles have on child development outcomes? In addition to Baumrind's initial study of preschool children, researchers have conducted a a number of studies about the impact of parenting styles on children. Because authoritative parents are more likely to be viewed as reasonable, fair, and just, their children are more likely to comply with their parents' requests.

Also, because these parents provide rules as well as explanations for these rules, children are much more likely to internalize these lessons. Rather than simply following the rules because they fear punishment as they might with authoritarian parents , the children of authoritative parents are able to see why the rules exist, understand that they are fair and acceptable, and strive to follow these rules to meet their own internalized sense of what is right and wrong.

The parenting styles of individual parents also combine to create a unique blend in each family. For example, the mother may display an authoritative style while the father favors a more permissive approach. This can sometimes lead to mixed signals. In order to create a cohesive approach to parenting, it is essential that parents learn to cooperate and combinetheir unique parenting styles. Links between parenting styles and behavior are based on correlational research , which is helpful for finding relationships between variables but cannot establish definitive cause-and-effect relationships.

While there is evidence that a particular parenting style is linked to a certain pattern of behavior, other important variables such as a child's temperament can also play a major role. There is also some evidence that a child's behavior can impact parenting styles. One study published in found that the parents of children who exhibited difficult behavior began to exhibit less parental control over time.

Such results suggest that kids might misbehave not because their parents were too permissive, but because the parents of difficult or aggressive children gave up on trying to control their kids. The researchers have also noted that the correlations between parenting styles and behaviors are sometimes weak.

Cultural factors also play an important role in parenting styles and child outcomes. In contrast, authoritarian parents exert strict and sometimes arbitrary punishment without explanation. Also, they construct the boundaries of parental authority much more broadly than authoritative parents, which promotes resistance in adolescence Smetana, ; Baumrind, In this context, adolescents struggle to internalize the legitimacy of parental authority.

Also, in contrast to authoritative parents, indulgent and neglectful parents provide little information about boundaries or appropriate behavior. Such lax control can undermine parental authority, so that youth increasingly regard parents as not playing an authority role. Parents who exercise their authority are satisfied when their adolescent children respect them, which helps maintain harmonious relationships in the family Zhang et al.

As child-rearing agents, providers of information and rules, and primary sources of support for their children, parents need to establish their authority to better play their parenting roles. Certainly, although they are correlated, conflict and cohesion delineate different aspects of parent—adolescent relationships Zhang et al.

The distinction may be particularly strong in Chinese culture which emphasizes conformity and obedience Peterson et al. Our final aim was to test the hypothesis that the direct link between parenting style and relationship qualities would be stronger for girls than boys—and, to also explore whether there were gender differences in the mediating effects via adolescent autonomy and authority attitudes.

The results indicated only a few such effects. Briefly, girls in authoritative and indulgent homes reported more cohesion with mothers than boys, and girls of neglect and authoritarian parenting reported lower level of parent—adolescent cohesion than boys.

This may be due to that girls are more responsive and sensitive to social bonds than boys, and that cohesion and parenting style both reflects emotional atmosphere. Therefore, the relationships between parenting styles and cohesion were stronger for girls.

Besides, girls of indulgent parents were less likely to endorse parental authority than boys, while endorsement of parental authority had greater effect on parent-adolescent cohesion for boys than girls. To the extent that parents normally set more rules and expect greater obedience of parental authority for girls than boys Darling et al.

Therefore, girls of indulgent parents endorsed lower level of parental authority. Although gender moderated a few paths in the direct and mediating models, overall, the majority of paths were not significantly different for boys and girls across all of the models that were tested.

This may be due to that, with the implementation of the one child policy, Chinese parenting styles and socialization practices are becoming increasingly similar for their sole children Lu and Chang, , resulting in more similar associations between parenting styles and parent—adolescent relationships and also the mediating effects of autonomy and authority for these relationships for boys and girls.

Several limitations of this study should be noted. First, the participants were urban adolescents in mainland China which is characterized as collectivist culture, so generalizing the results to other cultures or groups should be done with caution. Second, the correlational design does not permit causal inferences.

Longitudinal experimental data are necessary to identify causal relationships among the variables. Despite these limitations, the current study has important implications. The findings of this study extend existing research and suggest that prevention and intervention efforts are needed to primarily target the reduction of non-authoritative parenting styles, and the promotion of acquiring appropriate levels of autonomy expectations and endorsement of parental authority.

Future research should examine other possible mediating paths and sample a wider range of cultural contexts to explore adolescent development and family functioning. This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Institutional Review Board of Shandong Normal University. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. XB conducted the analysis and drafted the manuscript. YY and HL helped in performing the statistical analysis.

MW coordinated the data collection and helped in the statistical analysis. WZ conceived and coordinated the study and helped to draft the manuscript. KD-D helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript and the byline order of authors. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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