The Impact of Parenting Styles on Children

The world climbs in population every year, meaning new parents enter the workforce daily. With this influx of new parents, a wide variety of ideas change and adapt over time as people try to figure out what the “best” take on parenting is. Sadly, some parenting techniques including negative, helicopter, and permissive parenting — have disastrous effects. Negative parenting affects children’s confidence, helicopter parenting doesn’t prepare children for adult life, and permissive parenting leaves children to struggle with discipline. Some styles of parenting really make a disastrous next generation.

There are a wide variety of ways to raise children; a common technique that leads to a difficult adult life by lowering confidence in children is negative parenting. The article “How Parental Negativity Can Affect Children” states, “Negative parenting tactics, such as lecturing, complaining, insulting and yes, even nagging, can have a serious effect on your child's behavior and activities later on in life”. Clearly, being insulted and lectured multiple times a day by an authority figure can greatly affect a child’s confidence going into adulthood. The article goes on to say that, “It's not surprising – when you're constantly berating and nagging at your child, he's hardly apt to actively seek out the companionship of others. Instead, his negative feelings toward himself cultivate a feeling of unworthiness around other children... especially those who are receiving gold stars for their behavior instead”. This quote ties into the fact that a child’s self-esteem and confidence is greatly reduced due to the parenting technique. To continue on the topic of self-esteem and confidence in children, the article “Self Esteem & Bad Behavior in Children” talks about confidence in children saying, “Parents influence children’s self-esteem and behavior. You can improve your child’s self-esteem and encourage good behavior through positive affirmation and affection”. Unfortunately, some adolescents have to grow up with and deal with parents who constantly berate them, and sadly it does affect them further on.

While negative parenting can affect a child’s mental state, helicopter parenting results in ill-prepared children in an ever growing competitive world. According to Merriam Webster a helicopter parent is, “...a parent who is overly involved in the life of his or her child”. The effects of helicopter parenting are shown in an article titled “Helicopter Parenting May Negatively Affect Children's Emotional Well-Being, Behavior:” “Children who cannot regulate their emotions and behavior effectively are more likely to act out in the classroom, to have a harder time making friends and to struggle in school”. Without a parent to guide the child emotionally, he or she is much more likely to lash out in class or have a difficulty managing the workload. Another problem children with helicopter parents may have in the future is managing their health. The article “5 Problems Kids With Overprotective Parents Are Likely to Experience in Adulthood, According to Science” states that, “They found that most helicopter kids never learned how to manage their health because their parents always told them when to go to sleep, when to exercise, and what to eat”. Taking all of this information into account, helicopter parenting doesn’t allow the child to be independent, so once the child has grown up he or she will not be able to make a decision by themself. The child must grow up and have to figure out how much sleep to get, what to eat, and how to manage time; this leaves the kid alone without a planner to plan everything.

On the other side of the spectrum, permissive parenting leaves a child undisciplined for life. This style of parenting, according to the article “What Is Permissive Parenting?,” has a very loose structure and few rules; the parents really make a lackluster attempt at disciplining their children, and they usually show a lot of affection and love for their children. Therefore, “Permissive parenting is a type of parenting style characterized by low demands with high responsiveness”. The article goes on to state that because parents have low expectations of their children, and want to be friends rather than parents, kids suffer because of a lack of achievement and motivation to do well in what they do. The author of the article “4 Parenting Styles – Characteristics And Effects” explains some of the negative outcomes of this style: “Children have worse self-control” and “Children cannot follow rules”. These are foundational concepts that should be taught at a young age to prepare for adulthood. If done a certain way, the effects left from parenting can hurt an adolescent into adult years.

Overall, parenting really does affect how children grow and adapt to their world. The new parents of the world ought to be careful with how they raise their children, if not the consequences will show. These consequences arise because some parenting techniques, such as negative parenting, helicopter parenting, and permissive parenting, lead to major problems that show in adulthood. To quote the musician Willie Nelson, “You want to be a good parent and you want to be a friend, and it's hard to be both. You have to balance it as well as you can”.