The Seven Categories of Parenting Styles
Over the last four decades the number of parenting styles has grown from four to over thirty. Which one are you or your children using?
Which one is the best?
by Douglas Swallow on May 2, 2022
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that ain’t so.”
– Mark Twain
Much of the discussion on parenting focuses on style. Parenting style in this context refers to the strategies and practices parents use in child-rearing and the emotional culture they strive to create. Collectively, these three factors tend to be what adults most often remember about their parents.
At the center of today’s discussion on parenting styles is the modified Baumrind Parenting Styles model. The original model published in 1967 by Diana Baumrind, Ph.D., comprised three styles: Authoritative, Authoritarian, and Permissive. In 1983 it was modified by American psychologists Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin. They placed Diana’s work into two categories: Demanding and permissive and added the style, uninvolved.
The modified Baumrind model is a simple and excellent place to start the discussion. However, over the last four decades, the number of recognized parenting styles has grown from four to over thirty. These thirty-plus styles can be grouped into seven categories:
| 1. | Interactive |
| 2. | Successful |
| 3. | Dominant |
| 4. | Balanced |
| 5. | Permissive |
| 6. | Toxic |
| 7. | Intervention |
Interactive Parenting Styles
| 1. |
The attachment or natural parenting style: Developed by pediatrician William Sears and his wife, Martha Sears, and published in their book Attachment Parenting in 2001. The attachment parenting theory is comprised of seven elements or the seven Baby Bs, which include:
The Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) supported the attachment parenting style. The 35-year study concluded that the quality of early attachment played a significant role throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, particularly in emotional competency development. |
| 2. |
Authoritative parenting style: This style is also known as the democratic style. This demanding and responsive child-centered parenting style focuses on developing a child’s skills through a near-constant state of organized activities. One of its defining characteristics is its punishment for misbehavior, which is measured and consistent, not arbitrary or violent. Another is what Dr. Betty Lou Bettner and Amy Lew, authors of “Raising Kids Who Can,” call “The Crucial C’s” – connection, capability, courage, and feeling he or she counts. |
| 3. |
Consultive parenting style: The consultive parenting style is a question and choice-oriented style that focuses on developing the cognitive centers of the brain. It emphasizes talking “with” instead of “at” the child. It emphasizes asking questions over providing answers and allows the child to learn from their choices and experiences. |
| 4. | Empathic parenting style: This is a listening and emotional competency development-oriented parenting style. It emphasizes stopping what you’re doing, getting down to their level, looking lovingly into their eyes, and giving them your full attention. |
| 5. |
Tag team parenting style: This is a “work shift” and outside support-based parenting style. It is used by parents who work different shifts or days of the week and employ daycare facilities and others to fill in the time gaps. This style is frequently found in households with non-present grandparents and dual working parents. |
Success focused parenting styles
| 6. |
Tiger parenting style: This is a high discipline-oriented style that, to the exclusion of all else, that push’s the child or children to achieve straight “A’s” in school, perfect SAT and ACT scores, and/or extraordinary results in non-academic activities, such as sports and music. The style was identified by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua and introduced in her book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, in 2011. |
| 7. | Ethnic minority parenting style: As with Tiger Parenting, this style focuses exclusively on ensuring each child achieves the highest levels of academic achievement. But it does so by also being highly responsive to the child’s emotional needs. |
Dominant parenting styles
| 8. |
Drill Sergeant or authoritarian parenting style: According to Dr. Charles Frey, this is a command and control-oriented parenting style. That uses physical and verbal punishment, pain, threats, and humiliation to achieve compliance. Drill sergeant parents demand things to be done now and that every child complies with their rules, cultural beliefs, and principles without discussion, debate, or question. |
| 9. |
Helicopter parenting style: This style is characterized by one word – micromanagement. Helicopter parents appear to hover over their children like a helicopter, protecting them from anything that would cause them physical or emotional discomfort. |
| 10. |
Lawnmower parenting style: Also known as the “bulldozer” and “snowplow” parenting style. Parents displaying this style “mow over” any problem or challenge their child faces and focus on removing challenges before they occur. |
Balanced parenting styles
| 11. |
Dolphin parenting style: Dolphins are known for their playful, intelligent, and advanced social mannerisms. This style seeks to mimic this by gently yet authoritatively preparing children for healthy, happy, and successful lives. In this style, parents are not overprotective, don’t over instruct, are supportive, and refrain from overscheduling activities. |
| 12. | French parenting style: In the family of balanced parenting styles, this one is at the top of the list. The leading author on the topic of French parenting is Pamala Druckerman, who wrote “Bringing up Bebe”: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. Balance is at the center of the platform that uses every variable in the matrix of child-rearing strategically. It is the polar opposite of helicopter parenting and as you might expect, food and family together time, without distractions, plays a central role. And mothers ensure they spend a balanced amount of time between child-rearing, work, and being a wife – religiously. |
| 13. |
Positive parenting style: This style focuses on developing a strong parent-child relationship based on positive communication and mutual respect. This style is most evident in how parents communicate with their children. They not only tell their children what to do, they tell them why. |
| 14. |
Nurturant parenting style: According to Wikipedia’s overview of this balanced parenting style, the focus is on providing children both “roots in the ground and wings to fly.” It respects and builds on children’s inherent intelligence and provides them with the guidance to avoid harmful physical and emotional mistakes. It encourages age-appropriate chores, limited allowance, healthy boundaries with strangers, and encourages open and regular discussion of feelings and ideas. |
| 15. |
Alloparenting style: This parenting style is the last of the balanced parenting styles. It is found mainly in central Africa and India. It strategically employs the use of several caregivers that include siblings, grandparents, relatives, and unrelated family members. In the societies where this style is prevalent, it is widely held that it is the responsibility of the community at large to ensure the success of each and every child, including a successful marriage. |
Permissive parenting styles
| 16. |
Free-range parenting style: The only legally protected parenting style in the US is free-range parenting. The style is explicitly protected in the states of Utah, Texas, and Oklahoma. It is a limited parental supervision-oriented style that encourages children to function independently. It is the absolute opposite of helicopter parenting. Contemporary supporters of the style, such as Lenor Skenazy, suggest the prevailing parenting styles, spoon-feeding academic platforms, and excessive overscheduling of activities inhibit personal growth and development in children. The free-range parenting style was introduced in the mid-1940s by the American pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock in his best-selling book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. To date, his book has reportedly sold over 50 million copies. |
| 17. |
Slow / simplicity-oriented parenting style: These are modified free-range parenting styles that focus on scheduling a minimal number, if any, scheduled activities. The style promotes play and discourages watching television. |
| 18. |
Montessori parenting style: This style was developed by the world-renowned Italian doctor Maria Montessori. The style is primarily built on ten principles that include:
|
| 19. |
Elephant parenting style: This is another modified free-range parenting style that was introduced by Priyanka Sharma-Sinhar in 2014. The style is built on the principles of community parenting, happiness, extra nurturing, letting kids be kids, encouraging individuality, happiness over grades and academic achievement, and being close but not too close. |
| 20. |
Indulgent, permissive, non-directive, lenient, and libertarian parenting styles: Under this collection of styles, parents are more friends than parents. They are highly responsive, low on structure, and have very few rules and standards of behavior. They allow their children to make their own decisions, play on their own without parental supervision, and give them what they want. |
Toxic parenting styles
| 21. |
Punitive parenting style: The American Psychological Association defines punitive parenting as “a parent’s habitual use of punishment to teach or control a child, often involving abusive or coercive practices such as yelling at, threatening, pushing, grabbing, hitting, or verbally disparaging the child. |
| 22. |
Brick wall parenting style: This style is obsessed with order, control, and obedience. Direction, orders, and rules are non-negotiable, and love, affection, and rewards are conditional based on compliance. |
| 23. |
Fear-based parenting style: This style is considered by many to be an overparenting style that is rooted in parents’ desire to protect their children from ever getting into tough or uncomfortable situations. |
| 24. |
Neglectful/disengaged/uninvolved parenting style: Parents embracing these styles are more interested in their own affairs. Display little to no attachment to the child. Fail to be involved in the child’s education, interest, and activities. |
| 25. |
Differential parenting style: In this style, children receive different parent styles and behavior from their parents. Siblings have completely different experiences growing up in the same household. |
| 26. |
Affectionless control parenting style: This toxic parenting style combines a genuine lack of caring about the well-being and development of the child with over-control and constant hurtful criticism. |
| 27. |
Toxic parenting style: Parents that display this style are emotional loose cannons that are frequently verbally and physically abusive. They seek absolute control over their environment and those in it. They don’t take responsibility and shift blame whenever possible and frequently resort to name-calling, silent treatment, and gaslighting. |
| 28. |
Narcissistic parenting style: Parents that display this style are typically experiencing narcissistic personality disorder. They believe their children exist solely for their pleasure. Those experiencing this condition are very close to their children, maybe envious of or threatened by their children’s success in school, extracurricular activities, and relationships. Narcissistic parents regularly use threats and emotional abuse to achieve absolute compliance with their wishes. |
| 29. |
Pathogenic parenting style: This style is also known as attachment-based parental alienation. It is the grandaddy of toxic parenting styles. The purpose of this style is to gain control over the child and for the child to reject the other parent. Parents displaying this style are typically experiencing a major psychological disorder such as depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disease. |
Intervention
| 30. | Commando parenting style: The last resort parenting style. When all else fails, there is the commando parenting style. This style pioneered by celebrity psychologist Dr. Phil is an extreme behavior modification strategy. That, at its core, involves doing whatever it takes to restore appropriate behavior and eliminate screaming, hitting, biting, and tantrums. |
In addition to Dr. Phil’s commando parenting style, there are the camps for troubled that fall into two general categories: scared straight and wilderness therapy. Both remove the child from their current environment and the people around them that trigger their inappropriate behavior and/or communicational style.
Scared straight programs were introduced in the late 1970s. Their core objective was and is to make the path on which trouble youths are on of inappropriate behavior and choices crystal clear on where it ends up – in prison. In this program, children and young adults are taken into prisons and forced to experience the very real threatening and violent environment that awaits them should they continue on their path. These settings and conditions are designed to scare youth into abandoning their current life path.
Wilderness therapy is based on a radical change in the environment. Here they take troubled youths deep into the forest. Once there, they take them through a series of nature-based exercises that promote self-discovery. In this environment, they are surrounded by supportive relationships and taught advanced skills for dealing with difficult people and the everyday mental health issues most youths in America are experiencing.
The whole and complete parenting style
As you scan the landscape of parenting styles, one thing becomes obvious. We don’t know where we’re going or specifically what we are striving to achieve. The ancients did and were crystal clear on what they were striving to achieve with their human development platform. Something that is profoundly void in the prevailing platforms in the world today.
The late Stephen Covey, the author of the worldwide best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, noted that one of the most important principles was, to begin with the end in mind. In honor of his body of work, I offer for your consideration the whole and complete parenting style.
This style begins with the end in mind, with the goal of achieving five specific objectives:
| 1. |
Ensuring each child enters adulthood with a complete set of life skills and emotional competencies and is void of early childhood trauma. |
| 2. |
That each child knows what they were born to do, be, or create and the innate abilities they were born to do it with, and the optimal career path that is aligned with both. |
| 3. |
That each has absolute clarity on the principles of optimal human performance and the knowledge and skills to achieve the highest levels of occupational, financial, personal, recreational, parental, and grandparenting success and spiritual maturity. |
| 4. |
That each boy and girl is aware of the extraordinary power of women to make dreams come true and can create an inspiring and emotionally fulfilling conscious, compatible, aligned, and respectful one-path marital relationships. |
| 5. |
That each enters adulthood with a whole and complete life plan and an understanding of the critical role their occupational leaders will play in their ability to know and become the most magnificent version of who they were born to be. |
What set of parental strategies, practices, and family culture, i.e., parental style, has the greatest likelihood of achieving these objectives? We don’t know. But what is known is the ingredients include time with parents, loving interaction, balance, and the absence of early childhood trauma and self-serving dominant and toxic parental behaviors.
Douglas Swallow is an enterprise performance development consultant. Who, for forty years, has been unraveling the mystery of what enables top-performing CEOs, managers, employees, and salespeople to perform at extraordinary levels. His work has led to the answer to this mystery and the solutions to eight-millennium business problems. One of which was employee disengagement. The root cause of the problem was found in three adjustments in the human development platform, one ancient and two contemporary. A society’s human development platform is one of the eight pillars on which all societies are built and operate. The keystone in all human development platforms is parenting style.