Parenting Styles

Essay by mrnavyman0504 December 2008

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The nature versus nurture debate is a controversy that we will never solve. One side says that we are genetically predisposed to how our personality develops and the other side says it is how we are raised in society that controls how our personality is developed. One thing for sure is that family relationships compose one of the most, not if the most, important influential factor in a child's development. One of the most influential relationships in these family relationships is the one between the child and the parents.

There are four aspects of family functioning that affect the development of children. One factor is warmth and nurturance. Children with warm and nurturing parents are more securely attached to their parents than those who have more rejecting parents. The second aspect is clarity and consistency of rules. Children who have parents that have clear rules that are consistently applied have children who are much less likely to be defiant or noncompliant.

The third aspect is dependent on how much the parents demand from the parents. It's the level of expectations they have for their children. Children who have high levels of expectations from their parents do much better in development. They have higher self esteem and show more generosity towards others. The final aspect is the level of communication between the parent and the child. Children who can openly talk to their parents and have a high level of communication have been found to be more economically and socially mature. Even thou each one of these aspects explains different categories, they occur together to form parenting styles.

Different combinations of these aspects make different parenting styles. There are four type of parenting styles: permissive type, authoritarian type, authoritative type and uninvolved type. Permissive parenting is high nurturance by the...