Authoritative Parenting

Book excerpt: Psychologist Diana Baumrind's revolutionary prototype of parenting, called authoritative parenting, combines the best of various parenting styles. In contrast to previously advocated styles involving high responsiveness and low demandingness (i.e., permissive parenting) or low responsiveness and high demandingness (i.e., authoritarian parenting), authoritative parenting involves high levels of both responsiveness and demandingness. The result is an appropriate mix of warm nurturance and firm discipline. Decades of research have supported the prototype, and we now know that authoritative parenting fosters high achievement, emotional adjustment, self-reliance, and social confidence in children and adolescents. In this book, leading scholars update our thinking about authoritative parenting and address three unresolved issues: mechanisms of the style's effectiveness, variations of effectiveness across cultures, and untangling how parents influence children from how children influence them. By integrating perspectives from developmental and clinical psychology, the book will inform prevention and intervention efforts to help parents maximise their children's potential.