Parenting Styles Essay

PSY 514
January 30, 2014

From the second you are born, you begin the most important relationship you will ever experience. This relationship is the one between you and your parents. It will affect many aspects of your life including every relationship you build in the future. Each parent falls under a specific style of parenting authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, or uninvolved. Each parenting style has a different effect on every aspect of a child's life from report card grades to a child's personality. The first interview I conducted was with a parent with an authoritative parenting style. Both parents come from a military background and placed high regard on organization, discipline, and respect, "I am not here to be my child's friend. They have friends." The children were very well organized and on very strict daily schedules. Everything was decided for the children and they had very little opportunity to voice their opinions. The children were made to attend piano lessons even though one child would have rather attended dance class and the other is more interested in sports. Compared to the textbook descriptions these children seem to be negatively affected by this parenting style. They often times seem unhappy because they are forced into activities that are not enjoyable to them. Also, when they try to voice their opinions about the activities or suggest alternatives their opinions are often taken as a lack of respect for their parents’ wishes. However, I do not see any signs of these children being overly aggressive with their parents or with their peers. I believe this parent has a resistant attachment style with her children. I think this is because when she is around they are always looking for her to tell them what to do. As a result, when she is gone they are anxious because they are not sure exactly what to do. However, they also get angry when she is around because they would like more freedom to act on their own and make their own decisions. I have concerns about this parents authoritative style. I think this could affect future relationship negatively because they are not allowed to express their needs or wants in their relationship with their parents. This may affect their ability to express their needs in future relationships such as a relationship with a spouse that depends heavily on each individual being able to effectively express what their needs are. The second parent I conducted an interview with was a single mom, the matriarch of a low income family. She has to work both a full and part time job to be able to support her family. Because of her work hours her child was enrolled in daycare with the help of state funding. The daycare has a high turnover of employees and is often overcrowded due to high demand for child care in low income families and a low number of daycares in the area who accept state funded children. Due to the circumstances, long hours at work, little sleep, and seeing her children for a limited amount of time. The second parent seems to have a permissive type of parenting. The short amount of time she spends with her children she likes to talk to them, love them, and show them that she cares even though she cannot be around all of the time, "I get so little time to spend with my children. When I'm with them I spoil them," She explains. When she is spending time with them, she corrects them very little for fear that they will not enjoy the time spent with her. I think these children are much what you would expect from the textbook definition. One child is what would be considered a 'class clown' and is always acting out in school. He is sent home with notes on a regular basis for behavior problems. The other child is struggling to keep her grades up. She is having trouble keeping up with the other children in her class in almost every subject but especially in reading. She gets easily frustrated because she is not finding the help she needs

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