Kimberly Kopko
Parenting Styles and Adolescents
This research brief provides an
overview of research on parenting
styles and their impact on
adolescent development. It is
intended primarily as a guide for
parent educators and other
professionals working with parents
of teens.
The teenage years are often
portrayed as stressful for both
parents and teens. Research
demonstrates that teens undergo a
number of developmental
adjustments including biological,
cognitive, emotional and social
changes on their way to becoming
adults. Parenting effectively
during the teen years, as in any
developmental period, requires a
thorough understanding of these
normative developmental changes.
Parents can benefit from an
understanding that
how
they
parent, or their parenting
style
,
provides a basis for many healthy
developmental outcomes during
adolescence. Understanding the
different parenting styles and their
impact on the parent-teen
relationship may help parents—
and their teens—navigate
adolescence more smoothly.
Parenting Styles
Psychologist Diana Baumrind
(1971, 1991) identified four
patterns of parenting styles based
upon two aspects of parenting
behavior: control and warmth.
Parental control
refers to the
degree to which parents manage
their children’s behavior—from
being very controlling to setting
few rules and demands.
Parental
warmth
refers to the degree to
which parents are accepting and
responsive of their children’s
behavior as opposed to being
unresponsive and rejecting. When
the two aspects of parenting
behavior are combined in different
ways, four primary parenting
styles emerge:
Authoritative Parents are warm but
firm. They encourage their
adolescent to be independent while
maintaining limits and controls on
their actions. Authoritative parents
do not invoke the “because I said”
rule. Instead, they are willing to
entertain, listen to, and take into
account their teen’s viewpoint.
Authoritative parents engage in
discussions and debates with their
adolescent, although ultimate
responsibility resides with the
parent. Research demonstrates
that adolescents of authoritative
parents learn how to negotiate and
engage in discussions. They
understand that their opinions are
valued. As a result, they are more
likely to be socially competent,
responsible, and autonomous.
Authoritarian Parents
display little
warmth and are highly controlling.
They are strict disciplinarians, use
a restrictive, punitive style, and
insist that their adolescent follow
parental directions. Authoritarian
parents invoke phrases such as,
“you will do this because I said,”
and “because I’m the parent and
you are not.” Authoritarian
parents do not engage in
discussions with their teen and
family rules and standards are not
debated. Authoritarian parents
believe the adolescent should
accept, without question, the rules
and practices that they establish.
Research reveals that adolescents
of authoritarian parents learn that
following parental rules and
adherence to strict discipline is
valued over independent behavior.
As a result, adolescents may
become rebellious or dependent.
Those who become rebellious
might display aggressive
behaviors. Adolescents who are
more submissive tend to remain
dependent on their parents.
Permissive Parents
are very warm,
but undemanding. They are
indulgent and passive in their
parenting, and belie
ve that the way
to demonstrate their love is to give
in to their adolescent’s wishes.
Permissive parents invoke such
phrases as, “sure, you can stay up
late if you want to,” and “you do
not need to do any chores if you
don’t feel like it.” Permissive
parents do not like to say no or
disappoint their children. As a
result, teens are allowed to make
many important decisions without
parental input. Parents do not
view themselves as active
participants in shaping their teen’s
actions; instead they view
themselves as a resource, should
the adolescent choose to seek their
advice. Research findings show
that adolescents of permissive
parents learn that there are very
few boundaries and rules and that
consequences are not likely to be
very serious. As a result, teens
may have difficulty with self-
control and demonstrate egocentric
tendencies that ca
n interfere with
proper development of peer
relationships.
Uninvolved Parents
are not warm
and do not place any demands on
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their teen. They
minimize their
interaction time, and, in some
cases, are uninvolved to the point
of being neglectful. Uninvolved
parents are indifferent to their
adolescent’s needs, whereabouts,
or experiences at school or with
peers. Uninvolved parents invoke
such phrases as, “I don’t care
where you go,” or “why should I
care what you do?” Uninvolved
parents rarely consider their teen’s
input in decisions and they
generally do not want to be
bothered by their teen. These
parents may be
overwhelmed by
their circumstances or they may be
self-centered. Parents might also
engage in this style if they are
tired, frustrated, or have simply
“given up” in trying to maintain
parental authority. Research
supports that adolescents of
uninvolved parents learn that
parents tend to be interested in
their own lives and less likely to
invest much time in parenting. As
a result, teens generally show
similar patterns of behavior as
adolescents raised in permissive
homes and they may also
demonstrate impulsive behaviors
due to issues with self-regulation.
RESEARCH ON PARENTING
STYLES
Developmental psychologists
overwhelmingly endorse
authoritative parenting as the
optimal parenting style for raising
adolescents (Steinberg, 2001).
Authoritative parenting is
associated with healthy adolescent
development and provides a
balance between
affection and
support and an appropriate degree
of parental control in managing
adolescent behavior. This
atmosphere provides opportunities
for the adolescent to become self-
reliant and to develop a healthy
sense of autonomy within a set of
parental limits, guidelines and
rules.
Although an authoritative
parenting style is related to
positive developmental outcomes,
many parents likely use a mixture
of different parenting styles when
parenting teens. For example, a
parent may be more
permissive in
allowing an extended weekend
curfew, but more au
thoritarian in
disallowing their teen to ride in a
car with friends after 11 p.m. Thus,
parents may modify their
individual parenting style to fit
particular circumstances.
Parenting styles may also differ
between parents (e.g
., one parent is
permissive while the other parent
is authoritarian). In this situation,
parents should discuss, in private,
acceptable and unacceptable teen
behaviors and those areas where
they can reach agreement in
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parenting their teen. For example,
if the teen breaks a curfew, both
parents could agree on a
consequence that they are willing
to enforce together, even if their
individual parenting style may not
warrant this action. In the case of
differing parenting styles, parents
should aim for consistency in
setting and enforcing rules on
specific teenage behaviors.
Adolescent behavior also
influences parenting style.
Whereas a cooperative, motivated,
and responsible teen may be more
likely to have parents who exercise
an authoritative parenting style, an
uncooperative, immature, and
irresponsible teen may be more
likely to elicit a parenting style
that is authoritarian or uninvolved.
Like most important topics in
psychology, research on parenting
styles is not immune to the nature-
nurture debate. On the nurture
side, developmen
tal psychologist
Eleanor Maccoby admits that
many studies in the past have
placed too much emphasis on the
effects of parenting style and
children’s psychological outcomes.
An overestimation of these
environmental results was due, in
part, to the fact that researchers
focused on one child in a family
but almost never studied
more than
one child in the same family. For
example, on the nurture
(environmental) side of the debate,
researchers interested in examining
the effects of parenting styles on
adolescents may have focused on a
13- year-old boy in a particular
family, but not on his 8- and 10-
year old siblings. Discussing
particular developmental outcomes
based on correla
tions between
parenting style and specific
adolescent behaviors by studying
only one child in a family does not
address whether the parenting style
or specific individual
characteristics of the child
contribute to the observed
outcomes. In this example, if the
8- 10-
and
13-year-old siblings
were exposed to the same
parenting styles
and
demonstrated
similar outcomes then researchers
may conclude
, based upon
correlational data, that parenting
style is related to specific
behavioral and developmental
outcomes.
Conversely, on the nature (genetic)
side of the debate, behavioral
geneticists tend to be less
interested in the home
environment (e.g. exposure to a
certain type of parenting style) and
more interested in inherited,
dispositional factors in children.
Researchers conducting these
types of studies look for
differences in children’s outcomes
despite being raised in a similar
environment. Like
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environmentalists, behavioral
geneticists may have been
overstating the effects of genes on
developmental outcomes, focusing
instead on individual differences
while underestimating the impact
of the environment on behavior
and development.
Researchers who study parent-
adolescent relationships are
increasingly looking at the
importance of the impact of
parenting on adolescent
development, and how experiences
in the family and other contexts
interact
with genetic factors to
influence behavioral and
developmental outcomes (Collins,
Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington,
& Bornstein, 2000).
Parenting Styles and Ethnicity
An authoritative parenting style is
more common among White
families than African American,
Asian American, and Hispanic
American families while an
authoritarian parenting style
appears to be more common
among ethnic minority families
than among White families.
Researchers believe these
differences in styles might be a
sign that parenting is linked to
culture and parental belief systems.
Although authoritative parenting is
less common in ethnic minority
families, this parenting style has
been linked with adolescent
competence across a wide range of
families (Steinberg & Silk, 2002),
with adolescents in minority
families benefiting as much from
authoritative parenting as their
nonminority peers (Steinberg,
Dornbusch, & Brown, 1992).
Interestingly, research also
indicates that White youth appear
to experience any undesirable
effects of an authoritarian
parenting style to a greater degree
than ethnic minority youth.
Several reasons are proposed for
these differences in parenting
styles and their outcomes: Ethnic
minority families may live in
dangerous neighborhoods, where
safety is often an issue. In this
context, authoritarian parenting,
which emphasizes parental control
and obedience to parental
authority, can be advantageous.
This parenting style is potentially
less harmful and mo
re beneficial
when the context of concerns
about unsafe neighborhoods
prompts parental behavior.
Moreover, most
early parenting
research was conducted with
White, middle–class families, and
differences between authoritative
and authoritarian styles may not
apply as readily to parents from
other cultures.
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