Parenting

• 1. Introduction

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  Worldwide, about 40 percent of all pregnancies are not planned, and more than 30 million babies are born each year as a result of unplanned pregnancies. Parenting begins for many people before they ever intend it to. The work that follows promotes and supports a child's physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and educational development from infancy to adulthood. It is not a single skill, and it is not reserved for biological parents. An older sibling, a step-parent, a grandparent, a legal guardian, an aunt, an uncle, or a family friend may all stand in the role. Governments and society take a hand in it too. How parents shape a child turns out to depend on history, culture, social class, and even the wisdom and wounds of the parents' own childhoods. The questions that follow are these. Why does no single correct style exist? How do four named styles diverge in their effects? Why do parents in Germany, West Africa, and Mayan villages reach such different conclusions about the same child?

• 2. The Four Styles

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  Developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind proposed three main parenting styles in early child development: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive. A fourth, the uninvolved style, was later added. Each combines acceptance and responsiveness with demand and control, and each maps onto a different emotional climate in the home. Authoritative parenting, which Baumrind called the "just right" style, pairs medium demands with medium responsiveness. These parents lean on positive reinforcement, use punishment infrequently, and support a child's autonomy within reasonable limits. Children raised this way score higher in competence, mental health, and social development than those from permissive, authoritarian, or neglectful homes. Authoritarian parents sit at the rigid extreme. They enforce a non-negotiable set of rules, demand strict obedience, and reach for punishment, often corporal punishment such as spanking, when rules break. In 1983, Baumrind found that children raised this way were less cheerful, moodier, more vulnerable to stress, and sometimes showed passive hostility. Permissive parenting occupies the opposite pole. Since roughly the end of WWII it grew more popular among middle-class families than working-class ones, prizing a child's freedom and relying on reasoning rather than rules. Its children tend to be happy but can show low self-control and self-reliance for lack of structure. The uninvolved or neglectful style describes parents who are emotionally or physically absent, with little communication and few expectations. Children of uninvolved parents suffer in social competence, academic performance, and psychosocial development. Author Alfie Kohn criticized the very categories, arguing they "blur the differences between 'permissive' parents who were really just confused and those who were deliberately democratic."

• 3. Quarrels Over The Map

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  Baumrind's typology, for all its influence, has drawn significant criticism for overly broad categorizations and an imprecise, overly idealized description of authoritative parenting. Dr. Wendy Grolnick took issue with the term "firm control," arguing for a clear line between coercive power assertion, which harms children, and the more positive practices of structure and high expectations. Newer styles try to capture what the original four miss. Intrusive parenting uses "parental control and inhibition of adolescents' thoughts, feelings, and emotional expression through the use of love withdrawal, guilt induction, and manipulative tactics." Its targets may grow "unassertive, avoid confrontation, being eager to please others, and suffer from low self-esteem," and research ties the style to greater under-eating, risky cyber behaviors, substance use, and depressive symptoms. Unconditional parenting, popularized by Alfie Kohn in his 2005 book Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason, treats parental love as a gift rather than a privilege to be earned. Research professor Peter Gray adds a deeper time scale with trustful parenting, which he argues dominated prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies. Gray contrasts it with "directive-domineering" parenting that spread with agriculture and industry, and "directive-protective" parenting that took over in the late 20th century. Material parenting names a quieter habit, expressing love or shaping behavior through gifts withheld or given, which recent research links to reduced self-esteem and financial hardship in adulthood.

• 4. What Parents Actually Do

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  A parenting practice is a specific behavior a parent uses to socialize a child, and the small acts reveal large cultural beliefs. Many parents read aloud to their offspring in the hope of supporting linguistic and intellectual development. In cultures with strong oral traditions, such as Indigenous American and New Zealand Maori communities, storytelling itself becomes a critical parenting practice. The differences run deep enough to reshape ordinary moments. Parents in individualistic countries like Germany spend more time in face-to-face interaction with babies and more time talking to the baby about the baby. Parents in more communal cultures, such as West African cultures, spend more time talking to the baby about other people, and hold the baby facing outward so it sees what the mother sees. The Canadian Council on Learning identifies what helps children avoid poor outcomes: parents who communicate truthfully about events, maintain consistency through routines, reach into the community to build a supportive network, take an interest in educational needs, and keep open communication lines. Consistency is considered the "backbone" of positive parenting skills, and "overprotection" the weakness. The Arbinger Institute frames this as The Parenting Pyramid, building from ways of being, to relationship with spouse, to relationship with child, to teaching, and finally corrections. The claim is that correction lands better when it comes last, after the foundation is laid.

• 5. Learning To Parent

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  Parenting skills are widely thought to be naturally present in parents, yet substantial evidence runs the other way. Those from a negative or vulnerable childhood environment frequently, and often unintentionally, mimic their own parents' behavior with their children. Parents with an inadequate understanding of developmental milestones may also parent poorly. Group-based parent training and education programs have proven effective at improving short-term psychosocial well-being for parents. Named programs each take a different shape. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy works with both parents and children to teach more positive interaction. Parents Management Training focuses on children aged 3 to 13, with parents as the main trainees learning to handle challenging behaviors. The Positive Parenting Program, known as Triple P, aims to build parental confidence and self-sufficiency. The Incredible Years covers infancy to age 12 through small-group sessions, while Behavioral and Emotional Skills Training compresses behavior management into a single day rather than several weeks. Jay Belsky's process of parenting model is widely used to assess how a parent's work and social life shape parenting in early childhood. Belsky's model has shown how children, parents, and extended families can thrive, and how social support feeds into the home. When a parent's cognitions are more positive, a child can be raised more supportively, which can give the child positive self-perceptions that carry forward.

• 6. Best For Whom

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  Parents around the world want what they believe is best for their children, but their definitions of best diverge sharply. In hunter-gatherer and subsistence agriculture societies, many cultures begin teaching children to use sharp tools, including knives, before their first birthdays. The same childhood behavior can be read as virtue or fault depending on where the parent stands. European Americans prize intellectual understanding in a narrow "book learning" sense and treat asking questions as a sign of intelligence. Italian parents value social and emotional competence and read curiosity as good interpersonal skill. Dutch parents value independence, long attention spans, and predictability, and in their eyes asking questions signifies a lack of independence. The prosocial goals also splinter by region. Hispanic parents value respect and put family above the individual. Parents in East Asia prize order in the household above all, which can give rise to high psychological control. The Kipsigis people of Kenya value children who are innovative and use that intelligence responsibly and helpfully, a behavior they call ng/om. Cultures such as Sweden and Spain value sociality and happiness as well. In some Indigenous American communities, child work lets children absorb collaborative participation and prosocial behavior through observation alongside adults. These communities value respect, participation, and non-interference, including the Cherokee principle of respecting autonomy by withholding unsolicited advice.

• 7. Teaching Without Telling

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  In Navajo families, a child's development partly turns on "respect" for all things, learned largely through nonverbal communication. Children are initiated early into a morning run under any weather conditions, where the community uses humor and laughter to draw the reluctant child in, and parents may place a child in the snow and have them stay longer if they protest. Indigenous American parents reach for tools that guide without commanding. The Consejo, Spanish for "advice," is a narrative form: rather than telling a child what to do, a parent tells a story about a similar situation so the child sees the implications and stays decisive and independent. Playful teasing uses stories, fabrications, or empty threats to keep children safe, such as warning of a monster that jumps on the backs of children who walk alone at night. The deepest method may be the quietest. The practice called LOPI, Learning by Observing and Pitching In, folds children into mature daily activities so they learn by watching and contributing. In some Mayan communities, young girls are kept from the hearth for long stretches because corn is sacred, so they watch their mothers make tortillas only a few minutes at a time. The girls then practice the movements on other objects, kneading thin pieces of plastic like a tortilla. By the time a girl comes of age, she can sit down and make tortillas without ever having received explicit verbal instruction. In many cases, though, forced conversion, land loss, and displacement diminished these traditional techniques.

• 8. Across The Lifespan

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  A newborn's basic needs are food, sleep, comfort, and cleaning, and crying is the infant's only form of communication. Newborns require feedings every few hours, disrupting adult sleep, and respond to soft stroking, gentle rocking, massages, and warm baths. The forming of attachments is considered the foundation of the infant's capacity to form relationships throughout life. Children with secure attachments tend to form successful relationships and hold higher self-esteem, while those with neglectful caregivers can show post-traumatic stress disorder or oppositional defiant disorder. Toddlers, between 12 and 36 months old, grow far more active and begin learning simple tasks by themselves, often mimicking their parents. Tantrums arrive at this stage, sometimes called the 'Terrible Twos,' and frustration becomes an essential step in development rather than a failure. Data from the US in 2014 shows that on an average day, among adults in households with children under age 6, women spent one hour on physical care such as bathing or feeding, while men spent 23 minutes. Adolescence brings its own collision: the emotional center of the brain is fully developed, but the rational frontal cortex has not yet matured to keep those emotions in check. Studies show parents still shape how much teens drink, and a trusting relationship makes adolescents more likely to seek help against negative peer pressure. Parenting does not usually end at 18. Article 25.2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds that "Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection." Data from the British Household Panel Survey and the German Socio-Economic Panel suggests that up to two children increases happiness in the years around the birth, mostly for those who postponed childbearing, while a third child does not.