11-20 Years Classic Research

PERIOD:

11-19 years

RESEARCH:

Baumrind, Diana. (1968.) Child care practices anteceding three patterns of preschool behavior. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75, 43-88.       Baumrind, Diana. (1971.) Current patterns of parental authority. Developmental Psychology, 4, 99-102.       Weiss, Laura H., & Schwarz, J. Conrad. (1996.) The relationship between parenting types and older adolescents' personality, academic achievement, adjustment and substance use. Child Development, 6, 2101-14.

      Diana Baumrind has been one of the major researchers studying the effects of parenting styles on children's development. She has proposed that there are seven distinct parenting styles-Authoritative, Democratic, Nondirective, Authoritarian-Directive, Nonauthoritarian-Directive, Unengaged, and Good Enough. Through the results of her longitudinal research, Baumrind has found that the best-adjusted children and adolescents come from homes where firm, consistent discipline is enforced and where parents are warm and supportive of their children's needs and activities. She titles this style of parenting Authoritative.

      Other types of parenting produced less positive results. Children from Democratic homes had substantially higher drug use but were otherwise similar to those from Authoritative homes. Teens from Nondirective homes were less competent, achievement oriented, and self-regulated than teens from either Authoritative or Democratic homes. Children from the Directive homes, where parents were controlling, firm, rejecting, and traditional, were more likely to lack social responsibility, be conforming, and oppose drug use. Good Enough parents produced teens who were moderately competent. Finally, children who showed the lowest school achievement and the greatest problems in adjustment were from the Unengaged parenting pattern.

      Weiss and Schwarz studied Baumrind's classification scheme as it affected older adolescents, more specifically college students. The researchers gathered information from multiple respondents, whereas Baumrind had used a single informant, the student, to study parenting styles. They studied 178 college students and their families and found that many of the predicted relations existed between parenting style and the child's behavior in four areas-personality, adjustment, academic achievement, and substance use.

      The results of the study were mixed with regard to Baumrind's research. The results obtained were similar to Baumrind's, but the magnitude of differences in the behavioral outcome of the parenting styles was smaller. The main difference was that while older teens from Authoritative homes achieved higher scores in the majority of instances, these scores did not distinguish them from children of all other family types. The researchers suggested that this might be due to their study's subjects-teens from families in a university community.

      Children from Unengaged homes were likely to be nonconforming, maladjusted, dominating, selfish, and unoriginal; and additionally, they consumed more alcohol than older children from other parenting types. Children from Authoritative, Nondirective, and Democratic homes all showed positive outcomes, perhaps indicating that the support of parents is an important factor in late adolescent development. All other parenting styles produced the types of personal strengths or weaknesses that were presented above. In addition, there were some significant gender differences in performance. In both Democratic and Nondirective groups, the results favored daughters over sons-suggesting that perhaps sons required more structure and rule setting to reach their full potential than did daughters.

      The results of this research have utility today because they suggest the need to renew our commitment to supporting families through education and parenting classes. Drug and alcohol counselors also need to be aware of the powerful impact that parenting styles have on the drug abuse behaviors of their youthful clients. Finally, it is important to realize that there is a generational similarity in parenting styles-children tend to model the child-rearing styles of their parents. Early intervention in identifying children at risk may be helpful in designing ways to change the more negative styles of parenting.

Websites:

http://webmd.lycos.com/wellness_topic/prt

http://healthfinder.gov

http://lifematters.com/parentn/html