Parenting Styles

For several decades, developmental psychologists have explored the issue of how to characterize “good” or adaptive parenting, hoping to identify those parenting behaviors that promote healthy child development. Developmental researchers have investigated distinct parenting styles, or general patterns of caregiving, that have been linked either positively or negatively with children's overall functioning. These different styles of parenting were first explored in laboratory and naturalistic observations of parent–child interactions during the 1960s. Since that time, clinical researchers have homed in on specific parenting practices reflective of these broad parenting styles in an effort to learn how and why maladaptive parenting might lead to particular childhood disorders. In recent years, research into effective parenting has focused largely on two global constructs that appear to positively influence child ...