Parenting Styles

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Parenting Styles and Substance Abuse There are two drastically diverse types of parenting styles that contribute to adolescent substance use and abuse. On one side of the continuum, parents play the role of the adolescent’s overinvolved coach. These parents push and force their children into doing things they may not particularly want to do by using strict procedures and regulations. However, on the other side of the continuum, parents play the role of the adolescent’s friend, rather than parent. These parents often times do not set policies or guidelines for their children to follow, nor do they encourage, support, or show warmth towards them throughout their developing years. These two types of parenting methods can lead to many challenging …show more content…
Bremer’s (2012), study examined how parental stressors, which was defined as parents holding unattainable expectations, in adolescent developmental years, which ultimately lead to tension between the parent and child which resulted in an overall disconnect within their families. This style of parent-child relationship is also known as authoritarian parenting (Story, 2011). Conclusively, Hellstedt (1990) discussed how parental pressures resulted negatively on children during competitive activities, which lead to withdrawal or continuance of the activity to please their parental figures in order to obtain a reward. Extrinsic motivation, defined as working for an incentive, is a key factor that has led many children into preforming adequately better in competitive activities, academic careers and personal life endeavors. Parents find extrinsic motivation extremely helpful in pushing their children, in reality, this is causing the child to perform not out of love, but because they know they will receive a reward (Rockafellow, & Saules, 2006). Hellstedt (1990) noted that adolescents are more likely to continue within a competitive activity in order to receive acceptance and in some cases love from their parental figures. Often times, when the adolescent does not receive that reward or wanted acceptance from their parental figures, they will lash out and turn to substances use. Story (2011) discussed that not receiving acceptance from parental figures may possibly lead to low self-esteem, which ultimately could lead to substance abuse by the adolescent due to the feelings of worthlessness. Therefore, this is a disastrous outcome, from using authoritarian parenting methods, on adolescent substance abuse that is relatively