What is authoritative parenting?
The authoritative parenting style is an approach to child-rearing that combines warmth, sensitivity, and the setting of limits. Parents use positive reinforcement and reasoning to guide children. They avoid resorting to threats or punishments.
This approach is common in educated, middle class families, and linked with superior child outcomes throughout the world.
For example, kids raised by authoritative parents are more likely to become independent, self-reliant, socially accepted, academically successful, and well-behaved. They are also less likely to report depression and anxiety, and less likely to engage in antisocial behavior like delinquency and drug use. And research suggests that having at least one authoritative parent can make a big difference (Fletcher et al 1999).
But what exactly sets the authoritative parenting style apart? How is it different from authoritarian parenting? How do experts decide if you’re an authoritative parent, or practicing some other parenting style? And why, exactly, do researchers think authoritativeness breeds success?
The authoritative parenting style: The original definition
The authoritative parenting style was first defined by developmental psychologist Diane Baumrind, who proposed a new system for classifying parents. Her idea was to focus on the way parents attempted to control their kids (Baumrind 1966).
She recognized three major approaches to parental control:
Permissive parents are warm and responsive, but reluctant to impose rules or standards. They prefer to let their kids regulate themselves.
Authoritarian parents show less warmth and sensitivity, and insist on blind obedience. They attempt to enforce compliance through punishments, threats, and psychological control.
Authoritative parents are warm and responsive, like permissive parents. But where permissive parents shrink away from enforcing standards, authoritative parents embrace it. They expect maturity and cooperation…as much as is appropriate for a child’s developmental level. And they try to guide behavior by reasoning with their kids.
In subsequent studies, researchers also recognized a fourth style, sometimes called “neglectful parenting,” where parents lack warmth and fail to enforce standards (Maccoby and Martin 1983).
