Parenting Styles and the Child's Psychological Wellbeing

Parenting styles refer to the attitudes and behaviours that parents display towards their children. They significantly influence the the child’s psychological, cognitive, emotional and social capacities. As such, parenting styles have an impact not only on the child’s wellbeing during childhood but also on their wellbeing later in adult life.

Here is a brief overview of the four main parenting styles (with a detailed description below):

• Authoritative parenting style is supportive, nurturing, and responsive to the child’s needs, whilst enforcing firm but not rigid boundaries.

• Authoritarian parenting style is rigid, controlling, and punitive, replacing guidance and support with demands.

• Permissive parenting style is characterised by warmth but no or little boundaries and much freedom for the child.

• Uninvolved or neglectful parenting style is one where parents are indifferent to the child’s needs.

How Do Parenting Styles Develop?

Whilst there is an abundance of research on how parenting styles influence a child's psychological, social, emotional, and mental health development, there is limited information about how parenting styles develop and why different parents adopt different approaches.

It's important to note that parenting styles reflect both conscious and unconscious behaviours. On one hand, a parent may consciously treat and raise their child in a particular way because they perceive or have learned it to be the best approach.

However, the majority of parenting—and the largest parental effect on the child—will come from the parent's unconscious behaviour, reactions, beliefs about themselves, others, and life in general. The child will also absorb the interactions between parents, wider family dynamics, and cultural particularities, both verbally and nonverbally.

While a parent may want to adopt a particular parenting style, it may only be done at a behavioural level.

Parents often exhibit the parenting style they experienced growing up. If raised by an authoritarian parent, they are likely to adopt the same style when raising their own children. However, if a parent sees deficits in how they were brought up or resents their childhood treatment, they may attempt to alter their parenting style. While it's beneficial to correct mistakes from one's upbringing, a parent may adopt a different style behaviourally but still unconsciously exhibit characteristics of the style they experienced.

For instance, a parent raised with an authoritarian style may want to adopt an authoritative one by providing guidance, support, and open communication. However, under stress, they may exhibit aggression, demand discipline, and resort to controlling behaviour. Similarly, someone raised by neglectful parents may attempt to be more involved, provide structure, and attune to their child's feelings. However, they may still unconsciously lack boundaries and find it hard to be fully present and emotionally engaged.

The unconscious elements of parenting styles stem from an individual's upbringing and how it affected their personality. Childhood trauma may be intergenerationally and unconsciously passed onto children through parenting patterns. Such childhood trauma may also reflect culturally predetermined behaviours, beliefs, and experiences.

For a person to change unhealthy unconscious parenting patterns into healthy ones, they often need to resolve their own childhood trauma and internal conflicts through psychotherapy.

Types of Parenting Styles

Authoritative Parenting Style

This parenting style is a form of positive parenting, characterised by open communication, reasoning, warmth, guidance, and support. It seeks a balance, setting clear boundaries while also encouraging independence and open communication. Parental expectations are high but reasonable, combined with parental support and guidance—including emotional support. Parental involvement is high but not engulfing or controlling for the child.

A parent with an authoritative parenting style is attuned to the child's needs, available to meet them, and does not allow their own needs to get in the way. Under stressful conditions, the parent tends to validate the child's negative experiences rather than reject or rationalise them, without compromising boundaries.

Boundaries are firmly set and always communicated appropriately to the child. While they are firm, they are not rigid, and deviations are communicated when they occur.

Authoritative parents treat their children with respect, communicating in a way that does not infantilise or make them feel inferior. Instead, they treat the child as a separate individual with dignity, appropriate to their developmental age.

The authoritative parenting style tends to be associated with raising confident children who cope better with stressful situations, perform better in educational environments, have better emotion regulation, and develop better social and relationship skills.

As adults, those raised by authoritative parents have fewer mental health issues, stable self-esteem, a coherent sense of identity, and engage in relationships with more intimacy and empathy. A child who is subject to an authoritative parenting style is more likely to develop a secure adult attachment style as an adult.

Authoritarian Parenting Style

Authoritarian parenting is characterised by strict rules, high expectations, a demand for obedience, and little room for negotiation or flexibility. The parent positions themselves as an authority figure rather than a supportive guide for the child. As such, demands are high, but guidance on how to meet them is low or non-existent. The only guidance provided is in the form of strict rules and demands, often leaving a child feeling incompetent and dependent. Many elements of authoritarian parenting style may be experienced as childhood trauma.

Communication of parental expectations when an authoritarian parenting style is used is typically one-way, from parent to child, without regard for the child's experiences or needs and without their validation. The child's distress from negative experiences—for instance, feeling sad or hurt—is often either disregarded and ignored, devalued, undermined, or sometimes even shamed. Children raised in such an environment may learn to suppress their emotions or develop maladaptive coping mechanisms, leading to potential mental health issues and difficulties in forming healthy relationships later in life.

This can lead to children who are anxious, lack self-esteem, and may develop mental health issues in childhood and later life. They may also struggle with emotional intelligence (Alegre, 2011; Nastas & Sala, 2012), exhibit more aggression (Masud et al., 2019) and struggle with depression (Oppenheimer et al., 2018).

Authoritarian parenting, because of its highly controlling nature, is also associated with the development of dependency, so children raised this way may feel incompetent for independent adult life, feel scared of it, and may over-rely on others.

We can often find that those who struggle with impostor syndrome were subjected to authoritarian parenting in childhood. As such, they may feel unworthy and not good enough despite the successes they achieve, leaving them in a perpetual loop of self-contempt, self-loathing, fear of being exposed, and dissatisfaction with any of their professional or personal achievements.

As adults, clinical experience shows that the individuals who were subject to authoritarian parenting may, when relationships or career is under pressure, not only suffer from self-blame, self-criticism, feelings of guilt and shame, but also a sense of internal emptiness.

An authoritarian parenting style is also associated with increased eating disorder issues in children (Enten & Golan, 2009; Peleg et al., 2021), whilst eating disorder traits are often seen extending well into the individual's adult life.

It is crucial to recognise that parenting styles are not merely a matter of personal preference but can have far-reaching implications for a child's overall development and future well-being. While authoritarian parenting may stem from good intentions, such as a desire for obedience and adherence to rules, it often fails to consider the child's emotional and psychological needs, ultimately hindering the child’s psychological and social development.

Permissive Parenting Style

Permissive parenting tends to be very lenient, with few demands on the child. It is characterised not only by a lack of control but also a lack of practical and psychological boundaries, which creates issues in the child's psychological development. While permissiveness may be interpreted by parents as warmth and nurturing, it is actually experienced by the child as feeling unsafe, lost, confused, and without real direction, influencing the development of their sense of self, identity, self-worth, and direction in life.

Parents who use a permissive parenting style usually succumb to the child's demands, either due to a lack of motivation to set boundaries or because they feel uncomfortable with setting boundaries. Permissive parenting is often argued as being underpinned by love, support, understanding, and a willingness for the child to grow into their own identity. There is often a lack of intergenerational boundary between the parent and child. Also, due to the lack of parental involvement, the child may resort to peers for guidance and identity formation.

However, contrary to many parents' expectations, identity, self-esteem, a sense of self-direction, self-worth, and independence in the child are not stimulated by permissiveness but by supportive guidance, clear and firm (but not rigid) boundaries, and healthy control.

Children subjected to permissive parenting may struggle with self-regulation (Piotrowski et al., 2013), anxiety (Kadoglou et al., 2024) and depression (Romero-Acosta et al., 2021). They may become self-absorbed and demanding. As adults, they may therefore have issues with interpersonal relationships and struggle with authority and the limitations of adult life.

We also see such children develop unhealthy narcissistic traits that may inhibit them later in life, affecting their self-esteem, self-worth, and close relationships. A lack of independence and high levels of dependency are also common. Additionally, eating disorders tend to be more common among those who experienced permissive parenting as children (Haycraft & Blissett, 2010).

Uninvolved Parenting Style

Uninvolved parenting style, also known as the neglectful parenting style, is characterised by a lack of parental engagement, responsiveness, validation, and guidance. It manifests through parents providing little support, boundaries, or healthy control. There is a lack of rules and expectations, and the child is often left to their own devices.

Uninvolved parenting may also take a covert form, where parents spend time with their child but are emotionally and cognitively detached, focusing on their own chores or problems. This may be experienced by the child as aloofness, detachment, and non-involvement of the parent. The uninvolved parent is more involved in their own needs and problems, failing to provide emotional support for the child. This leaves the child feeling emotionally disconnected, unsupported, and without validation of their experiences.

When a child is subject to uninvolved parenting, the child may be left to process stressful situations alone and may eventually stop showing and talking about their feelings to their parents. With uninvolved parenting, an emotional gap tends to grow between the parent and child, with the child having little trust and confidence in the parent's support during difficult times.

Individuals subjected to this parenting style may grow up excessively self-sufficient, but underneath this self-sufficiency lies a high level of dependency. They may find themselves in codependent relationships, taking care of others' needs while being highly dependent themselves. They also present with higher risk of depression (Wang et al., 2021). They may also have difficulties with social, close, and romantic relationships, having unconsciously given up on others and relying solely on themselves to meet their needs.

People who experienced uninvolved parenting often present with a sense of internal confusion and lack of direction, which may become exposed only once they are left without guidance they see in others. For instance, an individual whose sense of self heavily relied on caring for others may feel directionless when this is no longer required. As this occurs, a person may also become aware of their internal sense of emptiness, which may have previously been kept unconscious.

Ales Zivkovic, MSc (TA Psych), CTA(P), PTSTA(P), Psychotherapist, Counsellor, Supervisor

Ales Zivkovic is a psychotherapist, counsellor, and clinical supervisor. He holds an MSc in Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy awarded by Middlesex University in London. He is also a Provisional Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (PTSTA-P) and a Certified Transactional Analyst in the field of Psychotherapy (CTA-P). Ales gained extensive experience during his work with individuals and groups in the UK National Health Service (NHS) and his private psychotherapy, counselling, and clinical supervision practice in central London, UK. He was also a member of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). Ales works with individuals, couples, and groups. In clinical setting, he especially focuses on the treatment of issues of childhood trauma, personality disorders, and relationship issues. A large proportion of his practice involves online psychotherapy as he works with clients from all over the world. Ales developed a distinct psychotherapeutic approach called interpretive dynamic transactional analysis psychotherapy (IDTAP). More about Ales, as well as how to reach him, can be found here.

References:

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Haycraft, E., & Blissett, J. (2010). Eating disorder symptoms and parenting styles. Appetite, 54(1), 221–224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2009.11.009

Kadoglou, M., Tziaka, E., Samakouri, M., & Serdari, A. (2023). Preschoolers and anxiety: The effect of parental characteristics. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcap.12445

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Oppenheimer, C. W., Hankin, B. L., & Young, J. (2018). Effect of Parenting and Peer Stressors on Cognitive Vulnerability and Risk for Depression among Youth. Journal of abnormal child psychology, 46(3), 597–612. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-017-0315-4

Peleg, O., Tzischinsky, O., & Spivak‐Lavi, Z. (2021). Depression and social anxiety mediate the relationship between parenting styles and risk of eating disorders: A study among Arab adolescents. International Journal of Psychology, 56(6), 853–864. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12787

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Romero-Acosta, K., Gómez-de-Regil, L., Lowe, G. A., Lipps, G. E., & Gibson, R. C. (2021). Parenting Styles, Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms in Child/Adolescent. International journal of psychological research, 14(1), 12–32. https://doi.org/10.21500/20112084.4704

Wang, Y., Shi, H., Wang, Y., Zhang, X., Wang, J., Sun, Y., Wang, J., Sun, J., & Cao, F. (2021). The association of different parenting styles among depressed parents and their offspring’s depression and anxiety: a cross-sectional study. BMC Psychiatry, 21(1), 1–495. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03512-8