The ongoing argument of nature versus nurture has always been the focus of developmental psychologists who are interested in discovering if one is more relevant than the other in multiple aspects of children’s lives. It is notable that finding actual cause-and-effect connections between parents’ actions and later behaviors and the overall experience of children is difficult. While different children are raised in dramatically different environments under opposite parenting styles, can grow up with very similar personalities and learning capacities. Conversely, children who live in the same home and are brought up by the same style of parenting can have different personalities and undergo development and learning differently. Therefore, understanding how parenting affects child development is an important topic that could shed light on the impact of different parenting styles. While there may not be a unified approach to parenting that guarantees children’s learning success, the choice of parenting styles could play an important role,
Positive Relationship Between Parenting and Development
Substantial research in the field of child development suggested that there was a positive relationship between the involvement of parents and children’s learning. Parents play a significant role in identifying the talents of their children and guiding them toward educational attainment or personal development. As suggested by Zahed Zahedani et al. (2016), both having close relationships and mutual understanding between parents and children are highly recommended as important components of parenting associated with the training and growth of talents, skills, the learning about social rules and norms, as well as choices of interests in the forms of hobbies that can transform in careers.
Scholars have also been interested in finding the connection between parental involvement in academic accomplishment and the educational or emotional profiles of children. A positive correlation between the two variables may show whether the attention of parents to the educational needs and accomplishments of their children contributes to favorable child profiles. According to Lv et al. (2019), both academic and emotional functioning are configured differently among children, with the various dimensions of parental involvement being associated with different academic and emotional profiles. The researchers found that such components of involvement as mother monitoring, the communication between mother and child, as well as mother-child and father-child activity led to more favorable profiles of children in terms of their learning achievement and emotional profiles (Lv et al., 2019).
Interesting findings pertained to the increased risks of children transitioning to risky educational and emotional profiles. Specifically, it was found that mother learning assistance, mother-school contacts, and father-school contacts negatively influenced the academic accomplishments of children (Lv et al., 2019). Therefore, it is possible to conclude that high levels of parents’ involvement in the learning and disciplining of children could have a reverse effect on accomplishment (Hosokawa and Katsura, 2018). It is crucial to understand whether the approaches to parenting, or parenting styles, also vary in their effects when it comes to facilitating success in child learning.
Parenting Styles
However, parents can view these aspects of learning differently depending on the dimensions that prevail in their approach toward disciplining children, teaching them necessary skills, and communicating. The four dimensions of parenting, otherwise known as parenting styles, include disciplinary strategies, techniques of communication, expectations of control and maturity, as well as nurturing, which characterize the approaches that parents take when bringing up their children.
Authoritarian Parenting Style
Authoritarian parenting is characterized by the expectation of children to follow strict rules that have been established by parents, and the failure to follow them results in punishment. According to the findings of Hosokawa and Katsura (2018), authoritarian discipline implemented by parents was shown to be related to disruptive behaviors in both boys and girls. As suggested by Rego (2015), authoritarian parents usually blamed their children for poor learning accomplishment and academic achievement. In turn, this leads to kids blaming other people for their own mistakes, which ultimately causes them to continue making bad choices as adults.
Authoritative Parenting Style
Authoritative parenting is also based on a set of rules, but it is more democratic and responsive to the opinions and feelings of children compared to the authoritarian approach. This style of parenting has been the most favorably reflected in research literature due to several important qualities. For example, authoritative parents usually listen to their kids and allow them to talk about their feelings. In the case of misunderstandings, parents inspire to talk about different options and solutions to negate the problem that has appeared (Rego, 2015). As found by Rego (2015), authoritative parenting was reasonably related to how learners contemplate and perform their studies, pointing to a positive connection between this type of parenting and learning. Besides, while the children of parents with the authoritarian style have the tendency to blame their failure in learning on someone else, the children of authoritative parents usually associate their failure with a personal shortage of effort (Rego, 2015).
Permissive Parenting Style
Permissive, or indulgent parenting, does not imply the making of many demands for children and is relatively low in expectations of self-control and maturity. Hosokawa and Katsura (2018) suggested that permissive parenting was related to disruptive behaviors in boys although having a positive effect on externalizing behaviors in boys and not girls due to gender differences. Rego (2015) pointed out that overly permissive parents who “baby” their children, instead of providing them with consistent and clear guidelines of behavior, contribute to an unsuccessful future and a lack of their self-confidence. The researchers concluded that both authoritarian and permissive parenting styles were the most likely to continue negatively influencing the development of children beyond their childhood, even though the styles were opposite in their approach.
Uninvolved Parenting Style
Uninvolved parenting is the least demanding and is characterized by low responsiveness and little communication between parents and children. Common behavioral patterns for parents with the uninvolved style include limited interactions with children, the lack of supervision and responsiveness, few or no expectations or demands for behavior, emotional distance, as well as showing little affection toward their children (Kuppens & Ceulemans, 2019). Children raised within an uninvolved household tend to experience a range of adverse outcomes in such areas as social skills or academic performance. They tend to be stressed due to the lack of support from their families, are emotionally withdrawn, and may fear depending on other people. In addition, delinquency during adolescence is high among children with uninvolved parents (Kuppens & Ceulemans, 2019). The complete lack of boundaries and attention to the needs of children leads to negative outcomes in behavioral and learning patterns, which explains why children of uninvolved parents tend to misbehave.
Impact of Parenting Styles
Therefore, parenting styles and approaches taken influence the way in which children develop in terms of emotional well-being, learning and education, adaptability, and other factors. As pointed out by Soponaru et al. (2015), the overall willingness to learn and develop positive behaviors among parents results in better adjustment of children and their future development. Regarding particular parenting styles, studies have shown that children raised in authoritative families were the most successful in multiple categories. They tend to obtain higher scores on indicators of adjustment, such as self-esteem, life satisfaction, happiness, academic achievement, resilience, and adaptability (Pinquart & Kauser, 2018).
In addition, children from authoritative households showed lower scores in poor adjustments, such as depression and anxiety, substance use, or behavior problems (Lund & Scheffels, 2019). The approach to parenting matters to the development of learning skills in children, with the authoritative style, not authoritarian, having the most positive impact. While these findings do not exclude the possibility of successful learners growing up in authoritarian or uninvolved households, they suggest that the parenting style matters to creating a favorable environment for learning.
A beneficial parenting approach that leads to learning success in children is linked to providing the focus on goals that involve personal growth and development rather than the demonstration of one’s worth to others. As pointed out by Rego (2015), students whose parents have clearly defined goals of learning, such as the mastery goal, tend to enjoy the learning process overall, which allows them to develop new abilities and cultivate knowledge proficiency. Another goal, which is referred to as personality involvement, helps students be more aware of demonstrating their abilities or preventing adverse rulings of their own capability. Importantly, students who reported having authoritative parents were more successful in accomplishing goal behaviors of mastery, which included independence, the tendency to try new things, the capacity to enjoy learning at schools, as well as have intrinsic motivation (Rego, 2015). Overall, vast evidence from research literature points to the advantageous role of authoritative parenting over any other approach.
Conclusion
To conclude, the complexity of child development as a multi-dimensional process makes it complicated to suggest for sure that parenting styles influence learning. However, the approaches that parents take can create either favorable or unfavorable settings within which children learn, get an education, and become accomplished individuals. Recent research suggests that the authoritative style has had the most positive influence on the learning of children compared to other styles. It is important that children are given clear and direct guidelines regarding behavior, social norms, and learning because it makes them more likely to adapt to the environment and enjoy gaining new knowledge. However, these findings do not mean that authoritative families are the only ones in which children develop the best due to a wide variety of factors that shape the environments for development and learning. It should be mentioned that further studies have the potential of comparing parenting styles more in-depth to determine whether one could be seen as more positive than another.
References
Hosokawa, R., & Katsura, T. (2019). Role of parenting style in children’s behavioral problems through the transition from preschool to elementary school according to gender in Japan. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(1), 1-17.
Lund, I., & Scheffels, J. (2019). 15-year-old tobacco and alcohol abstainers in a drier generation: Characteristics and lifestyle factors in a Norwegian cross-sectional sample. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 47(4), 439-445.
Lv, B., Lv, L., Yan, Z., & Luo, L. (2019). The relationship between parental involvement in education and children’s academic/emotional profiles: A person-centered approach. Children and Youth Services Review, 100, 175-182.
Pinquart, M., & Kauser, R. (2018). Do the associations of parenting styles with behavior problems and academic achievement vary by culture? Results from a meta-analysis. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 24(1), 75-100.
Rego, T. (2015). The concept of authoritative parenting and its effects on academic achievement. Journal of Psychology & Clinical Psychiatry, 3(6). Web.
Soponaru, C., Semeniuc, S., Dirtu, C., Magdalena, I., & Diaconescu, S. (2015). The effect of parental education on traditional Roma family. Romanian Journal of Experimental Applied Psychology, 6, 89.
Zahed Zahedani, Z., Rezaee, R., Yazdani, Z., Bagheri, S., & Nabeiei, P. (2016). The influence of parenting style on academic achievement and career path. Journal of Advances in Medical Education & Professionalism, 4(3), 130-134.