There is a plethora of literature and research out there that tells parents their parenting style is an important factor in how their children will turn out. What are parenting styles exactly? A parenting style is defined as “a constellation of parents’ attitudes and behaviors toward children and an emotional climate in which the parents’ behaviors are expressed (Darling and Steinberg, 1993).”
Throughout my teaching career, I have encouraged parents to be curious about their parenting style. Parents frequently ask me why their parenting style is important to the development and growth of their child. As stated before, an ample amount of research has been conducted on the impact of parenting styles on the developing child. I have found parenting assessment tools to be an invaluable resource because they provide parents with a visual scale on their parenting experience, including which parenting style each parent is using for each child being parented. The assessment tool I use is called the “Prepare/Enrich Parenting Assessment (PEP)”. This particular parenting assessment identifies five parenting styles:
- Uninvolved
- Permissive
- Balanced
- Strict
- Overbearing.
In this blog post, I discuss a brief history of parenting styles and then I will elaborate on the research behind the “Prepare/Enrich Parenting Assessment (PEP)” and why I use it with the parents at my school.
The idea of parenting styles emerged from the work of Baldwin and colleagues in 1945. They came up with three different parenting styles: democratic, authoritarian, and laissez-faire (Baldwin, Kalhoun, & Breese, 1945). In 1958, Williams came up with four parenting styles based on two dimensions (authority (A) and love (L)):
- ignoring (low A, low L)
- authoritarianism (high A, low L)
- over indulgent/permissive (low A, high L)
- democracy (high A, high L) (Williams, 1958).
Perhaps the most well known version of parenting styles comes from the work of Diana Baumrind. She started her research on parenting styles in the 1960s with three types:
- Authoritarian (very strict)
- Permissive (very laid-back)
- Authoritative (the middle ground).
In the 1980’s, the Neglectful/Uninvolved (self-explanatory) style was added, expanding Braumrind’s parenting styles to four.
What makes the “Prepare/Enrich Parenting Assessment (PEP)” different is that there are five parenting styles that PEP provides. The PEP assessment was created in 2014 by Dr. David Olson and his wife Karen Olson. It was inspired by their previous work in couples counseling which they started in the late 1970’s. The PEP is based around family systems theory, making it one of the most in-depth parenting assessments available today. The parenting styles provided in the PEP are based on closeness and flexibility. Below, I will describe the characteristics of these five parenting styles.
- Balanced: This is the optimal parenting style. Scores moderate to high on both closeness and flexibility. Characterized by warm and nurturing parents who are supportive emotionally, responsive to their child(ren)’s needs, encouraging toward independence (with monitoring), consistent and fair in meting out discipline, and who expect age-appropriate behavior.
- Uninvolved: Scores very low in closeness and very high in flexibility. Characterized by low emotional connection, low responsiveness from parent to child, high independence of child from parent (parents are disconnected from child’s life), highly negotiable rules that are loosely enforced, and few demands made on the child.
- Permissive: Scores very high in both closeness and flexibility. Characterized by parents who are overly protective of their child(ren), very responsive to their child(ren)’s every need, lenient in discipline, and unlikely to place demands on their child(ren).
- Strict: Scores very low in both closeness and flexibility. Characterized by strictly enforced rules, highly restricted child freedom, firm discipline, low responsiveness to child, and low emotional connection between parent and child.
- Overbearing: Scores very high in both closeness and flexibility. Characterized by being a helicopter parent–one that hovers over the child to provide for the child’s needs, and at the same time being strict about the rules while enforcing firm discipline (Olson and Wilde, 2016).
As stated before, I’m an authorized facilitator in the “Prepare/Enrich Parenting Assessment (PEP)”. I really enjoy diving deep with parents and finding out if their parenting styles are compatible with their unique, individual children. Please contact me if you are interested in scheduling a consultation. Contact info can be found here: https://folsompreschool.com/about-us/contact-us/
For more information on the “Prepare/Enrich Parenting Assessment (PEP)”, please visit the following website: https://www.prepare-enrich.com/the-assessment/parenting/
Please contact us for additional resources and research on parenting styles and PEP.