Do Different Parenting Styles Affect Cognitive Development in Children?

Overview:

The way we are raised plays a significant role in our development, with parenting styles serving as a primary driver. There are four primary parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved. The authoritarian style is characterized by strictness, with parents setting rules and boundaries without compromising, explaining, and offering punishment if disobeyed. Authoritative parents tend to be balanced, giving reasonable expectations and prioritizing communication. The permissive style tends to place no expectations on their child, giving a lot of independence. These parents tend to be very caring but reject placing limits or setting expectations on their child. The uninvolved parent is neglectful, ignoring the needs and desires of their children. With the vast differences in parenting styles, the cognitive development of children can greatly differ, yielding a diverse array of outcomes.

Authoritarian Parenting:

Authoritarian parents deem it reasonable to give out harsh punishments, and tend to encourage independence while giving lower levels of affection and nurturing (Timpano et al. 151). Unlike authoritative parenting, an authoritarian style of parenting has been found to be detrimental to a child’s academic success. Children who are raised in authoritarian households report lower self-worth and self-reliance, decreased happiness, less active coping, lower academic and non-academic achievement, but show a significant uptick in anxiety and substance abuse (Timpano et al. 152, 153). Rates of mental health issues seem to be highest among children raised by authoritarian parents. Several studies have identified that this style leads to children who are prone to lashing out and becoming harsh when situations are not in their favor. This has the potential to negatively impact their relationships with friends, family, romantic partners, etc., as the ability to empathize with others is severely underdeveloped.

Children with authoritarian parents are taught the importance of obedience and conformity, and they grow up expecting the world around them to see things in a similar fashion. This can impact their professional development as well, because effective communication is an imperative skill in the workplace. The authoritarian style of parenting is often used when parents do not have the time to invest in their child, no matter their resources. Since they spend limited time with their kids, they expect to get a lot out of their time spent. This creates a strict feedback loop that only intensifies the pressure on a child over time. All in all, this parenting style tends to hinder a child’s development in many more areas of life than it strengthens.

Authoritative Parenting:

This parenting style tends to be the most popular within the United States and many parts of the world. Parents tend to be warm and sensitive, setting limits for their children and using reinforcement to guide development. Authoritative style children have been found to perform at higher academic levels and achieve higher levels of education (Banstola et al, 16). This is connected to the resiliency and hope that these kids feel so when they experience a setback, they do not give up but immediately bounce back and keep pushing forward.

This style is linked to decreased risky behaviors, where these adolescent’s do not fall into peer pressure and say no to illicit and illegal substances. Parents who use authoritative parenting have also been found to reduce the number of suicide attempts by their children. This is because authoritative parenting is characterized by high emotional support and boundaries set by the parents which gives their children strong emotional relationships with their parents and prevents feelings of despair and hopelessness (Banstola et al, 18). This is associated with reduced rates of mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Overall, the adolescents raised by authoritative parenting tend to have high academic success with little fear of rejection, as well as high self-esteem that stems from active and involved parenting.

Permissive Parenting:

Permissive parents show high amounts of warmth to their children but tend to have low expectations or demands. This often leads children of this parenting style to exhibit low levels of overall behavioral and verbal control (Jabeen et al. 86). Emotion regulation and emotional intelligence are two of the main areas in which permissive parenting has a profoundly negative impact on the child’s cognitive development. Being exposed to stressors allows a child to develop the appropriate coping skills, consequently when parents are low in demandingness these skills do not develop. Therefore, when faced with stressful or negative situations, adolescents of permissive parents do not know how to appropriately express or control their emotions to handle the situation. This means they may act in aggressive ways or respond completely inappropriately when faced with a stressful situation. Therefore, not understanding how to regulate their emotions and respond appropriately can have tremendous consequences later in their lives. Overall, permissive parenting tends to have more of a negative influence on adolescents' development throughout their life. Failure to enforce rules and invoke responsibility can be detrimental to an individual’s formation of emotion regulation. This in turn makes adolescents more susceptible to improper emotional responses and worse mental health later in their lives.

Uninvolved Parenting:

This style is characterized by little to no parental involvement in the life of the child. This places a lot of personal responsibility on the child, having to cook, clean, and care for themselves in order to survive. With the neglectful nature of this parenting style, these children tend to have strained relationships with their parents, neglecting the daily needs of their children. These individuals tend to be more self-motivated as they age, already possessing many of the skills needed for adulthood. However, as adolescents they tend to experience mental health issues. Much of this is the result of having to care for themselves along with younger siblings (if there are any), balance education, and potentially working to obtain funds for food, a car, phone, and more that an uninvolved parent may not provide. As a whole, this parenting style tends to be the most difficult for the child, forcing kids to take the responsibilities of an adult before they should.

Sources:

Banstola, Ratna Shila, et al. “Impact of Parents’ Knowledge about the Development of Self-Esteem in Adolescents and Their Parenting Practice on the Self-Esteem and Suicidal Behavior of Urban High School Students in Nepal.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 17, no. 17, 19 Aug. 2020. Accessed 27 Apr. 2021.

Jabeen, Farah, M. Anis-ul-Haque, and Muhammad N. Riaz. "Parenting Styles as Predictors of

 Emotion Regulation among Adolescents." Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research : PJPR, vol. 28, no. 1, 2013, pp. 85-105.

Timpano, K. R., Keough, M. E., Mahaffey, B., Schmidt, N. B., & Abramowitz, J. (2010). Parenting and Obsessive Compulsive Symptoms: Implications of Authoritarian Parenting. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 24(3), 151–164.

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