Assignment 1: Parenting Styles

Parents demonstrate varying levels of warmth, expectations for adherence to rules, and openness of communication with children. Understanding characteristics and outcomes associated with parenting styles can guide you in helping parents develop the most effective skills for raising their children.

Tasks:

Use your textbook, the Argosy University online library resources, and the Internet to review the following parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive (Baumrind, 1971), and disengaged (Novak & Pelaez, 2004). After reviewing the styles, answer the following questions:

• Which parenting style, or styles, did your parents use? Describe the impact on your development.
• As a parent, which styles have you seen to be the most and the least effective? If you are not a parent, which style do you imagine you would use?
• Discuss the impacts of various aspects of culture on parenting styles. Are there some cultural groups that would benefit from one style of parenting more than others?
• As a mental health clinician working with parents of young children, what are some parenting behaviors that you can share that influence peer sociability either directly or indirectly?