Parenting Styles

No one ever said raising a child was an exact science.  Parenting is hard.  It is a complex activity that involves many definitive behaviors that work independently and collectively to influence child development.  Every parent struggles at some point to figure out how to be the best parent possible.  Being a good parent is no easy task but there are skills a parent can learn to meet the challenges of positive parenting.

Understanding parenting style is the primary step to understanding why children behave the way they do and thus learn parenting skills that are respectful and result-oriented.  Parenting style can be very simply defined as how a parent behaves around his or her children.  It is the overall pattern of parental actions that a parent has when engaging the children. 

Parenting style identifies two important components of parenting – parental responsiveness or parental warmth and parental demandingness or behavioral control.  Parental responsiveness refers to the amount of warmth and support the parent gives a child while parental demandingness pertains to how much control the parent wields on a child’s behavior.

Categorizing parents according to whether they are high or low on parental responsiveness and demandingness creates the basis for the four distinct types of parenting styles.