Psychology Essay: Exploring Parenting Styles and Child Outcomes

This essay explores the significant impact of parenting styles on a child's development, focusing on how parenting behaviors influence self-esteem, educational attainment, behavior, and cognitive development. It defines and contrasts the four primary parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved, highlighting their characteristics and effects. The essay reflects on how a combination of authoritative and permissive styles has shaped the author's personality and behavior, emphasizing the development of social skills and self-esteem. It advocates for the authoritative parenting style as the most effective, citing its balance of responsiveness and demandingness. The essay references research that supports the benefits of authoritative parenting, including children's social competence, academic success, and lower rates of behavioral problems and depression. The conclusion reiterates the importance of parenting in child development and the effectiveness of the authoritative style in fostering healthy parent-child relationships and understanding.

Running head: ESSAY
Parenting styles and its effects
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ESSAY
Introduction- The child parent association creates a significant impact on different
aspects of development of a child. When optimal, parenting behavior and skills exert a
noteworthy effect on the self-esteem of a child, educational attainment, behavior and
cognitive development. This essay will elucidate the effects of parenting style on childhood
development.
Discussion- The four parenting styles discussed in the chapter are namely,
authoritarian, authoritative, uninvolved, and permissive. Authoritarian parents are generally
considered disciplinarians and follow egocentrism, with little or no ability to understand
perspective of others (Jenningh, 2007; Stienissen, 2011). They promote one-way
communication, therefore prevent children from engaging in logical thinking. In contrast,
permissive parents allow their kids perform what they want, and provide restricted direction
or guidance (Rathus, 2013). While permissive parents tend to be nurturing and warm,
authoritative parents clearly state their goals and expectations. Their children are self-
disciplined since they explain the reasons behind the imposed discipline. However,
uninvolved parents provide complete freedom to their children and have limited or no
communication. With little nurturing, these parents have less or no expectations (Smetana,
2017).
I feel that my personality and behavior have been largely influenced by a combination
of authoritative and permissive parenting style. This can be accredited to the fact that they
helped me to exhibit proficient social skills and also increased my self-esteem, besides
making me more socially capable. If I were a parent, I would like to adapt to the authoritative
style of parenting, which I find most effective. This style would help in striking an uncanny
equilibrium of responsiveness and demandingness. While it would make the parents firm, but
they would never be restrictive or intrusive. According to Echedom, Nwankwo and
Nwankwo, E. U. (2018) authoritarian parents suppose and anticipate blind obedience from

2ESSAY
their children without interrogation or question. In contrast, authoritative parents display an
openness and also initiate dialogue with their children, in order to explain their demands and
standards.
The advantages of this parenting style can be associated to the fact that that it reaps
the maximum beneficial outcomes in children. Authoritative parents most dependably have
children who continually demonstrate social competence and are able to effectively handle
social interactions in the community or classroom (Rice & Williams, 2017). In addition,
children having authoritative parents also manifest the likelihood of high academic
performance and satisfaction in school. In addition, they report less instances of problem
behavior at school and are also affected by low levels of depression (Hock et al., 2018).
Moreover, this parenting style is regarded best since owing to the characteristic flexible
feature, authoritative parenting finds acceptance among most children, regardless of their
gregarious or shy nature. An authoritative parent is well aware of the strategies that need to
be adopted while dealing prudently with problems that are encountered while raising
children, by remaining firm (Wild, 2019). This in turn provides assistance to the children to
comprehend the need for flexibility and compromise.
Conclusion- To conclude, parenting is a multifaceted domain and reliant on a range of
personal factors that govern child development. Of the four different parenting styles,
authoritative parenting has been found most effective since the authoritative parent generally
has healthy association with the children and comprehends the inabilities of human efforts.

3ESSAY
References
Echedom, A. U., Nwankwo, T. V., & Nwankwo, E. U. (2018). Influence of Authoritative,
Authoritarian, Permissive, and the Uninvolved Parenting Styles on the Reading
Attitudes of Students in Anambra State, Nigeria. Journal of Library and Information
Sciences, 6(2), 1-25.
Hock, R. S., Mendelson, T., Surkan, P. J., Bass, J. K., Bradshaw, C. P., & Hindin, M. J.
(2018). Parenting styles and emerging adult depressive symptoms in Cebu, the
Philippines. Transcultural psychiatry, 55(2), 242-260.
Jenningh. (2007). Egocentrism. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OinqFgsIbh0
Rathus, S. A. (2013). Childhood and adolescence: Voyages in development. Cengage
Learning.
Rice, L. M., & Williams, S. R. (2017). How Different Parenting Styles Affect Children's
Self-Esteem.
Smetana, J. G. (2017). Current research on parenting styles, dimensions, and beliefs. Current
opinion in Psychology, 15, 19-25.
Stienissen, G. (2011). Piaget - Stage 2 - Preoperational - Lack of Conservation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whT6w2jrWbA
Wild, M. (2019). The Effect Of Authoritarian, Authoritative, And Permissive Parenting
Styles On Self-Image In Male And Female High School Teens.