My handy $300.00 Educational Psychology textbook had a couple of pages devoted to the description of “parenting style” and its impact of learning and behavior in the classroom. As it “activated previous knowledge” for me (a fancy term for “Hey! I’ve heard this before!) I got a little excited.
Mary Pipher’s RevivingOphelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls made #1 on the the New York Times Bestseller list in 1994. It has been a standard among people who work with children and provides amazing insight into gender differences which “common sense” tells us must be “natural.” Pipher’s opus walk us through case studies which she encountered in her many years of behavioral therapy then comments on the parenting styles which lead to, or enable girls to avoid, certain maladaptive behaviors among adolescent girls.
Both EdPsych Modules and Reviving Ophelia use a theoryput forth in 1966 by a behavioral psychologist named Diana Baumrind. The theory measures parenting by “control” and “responsiveness.”
Control: How many rules we have and how we apply discipline to enforce those rules.
Responsiveness: How affectionate we are, how supportive and how involved we are in our children’s lives.
Parenting Style is placed on a corresponding grid which looks like this:
The four different parenting styles are defined as the following:
· Authoritative: According to both Pipher and Braumlin, this is the optimal parenting style for well-adjusted children. It constitutes a high level of control, the setting and enforcing of rules and limits which protect children from negative outside influences while teaching them to manage themselves. This style of parent is strict but not unreasonable. The high level of responsiveness means parents will bend or adjust the rules depending on specific circumstances in the child’s life because they are very keyed in to what’s going on in the child’s life.
o Application:
§ Susie is not allowed to hang out on the playground after school with the other middle school kids. She is expected to come straight home after school so that she can do chores and help her mother with her younger siblings. She loves to dance, however, so her mother agrees to do her chores for her and lets her stay after school for the occasional school dance. She is, however, expected to be out front and ready to be picked up exactly at the previously agreed upon time.
§ Roger cannot watch movies without previous permission. His parents are very firm on not exposing him to gratuitous violence or negative depictions of women. His class at school is screening the new Transformers movie and Roger will have to sit in the Principal’s office. His mother has agreed to let him watch the film with his class but has a long talk with him afterward about certain unhealthy dynamics between the film’s hero and various female characters.
· Authoritarian: This high-control, low-responsiveness parenting style is typified by the “dictator” parent who makes and enforces rules regardless of mitigating circumstances. While this parenting style can be harsh and stifling leading to some maladaptive behaviors especially in girls (eating disorders, cutting, suicide), under certain circumstances, such as in dangerous and/or high-crime areas or communities which suffer from high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse such parenting can counteract negative societal influences.
o Application:
§ Susie is not allowed to interact with boys at all. Her father has insisted that the local school separate her from her male classmates by at least one desk and is lobbying for segregated P.E. classes and recesses. She must submit to inspection every morning to make sure that her clothing reaches to her neckline and wrists and that her skirts (which she is required to wear) fall a full four inches below her knees.
§ Roger must be home directly after school. He is allowed to participate in sports but only if one of his parents is available to chaperone during practice and games. He is not allowed to sleep over at friends’ houses or hang-out in the playground after school.
· Permissive: This low-control, high-responsiveness is fairly typical of today’s parents. Rules are either non-existent or not enforced and the household generally revolves around the desires of the child.
o Application:
§ Susie has learned that she can get attention from boys in her class by wearing revealing clothing and engaging in sex acts with them. She also manipulates the other girls in her class by spreading rumors about them among the boys. This behavior has caused many of the other girls in the class to make her the target of some particularly nasty bullying. Susie’s mother, concerned about how mean the girls in Susie’s class are, has written emails to the other parents accusing them of bad parenting. She has also written to the school principal, asking that Susie’s teacher be removed for negligence.
§ Roger hates doing homework. His father, remembering how much he hated homework as a kid, tends to sweep the issue under the rug. His mother feels that home time is family time and does not approach the issue in order to avoid family conflict. Roger is getting bad grades. His parents feel that his teacher should make time during the day so that Roger can complete his homework at school. They also suspect that the teacher is picking on Roger because of his learning disability which the school has never diagnosed but his parents strongly feel that he must have.
· Uninvolved: Low-control, low-responsiveness, this parenting style can basically be described as the absent parent.
o Application:
§ Susie has been having trouble with her school work for some time now. Her teachers have attempted to contact her parents in order to have her screened for a possible learning disability. A routine health check by the school nurse has revealed that Susie is in need of corrective glasses which could explain her difficulty in algebra. Her teacher, relieved and encouraged by this news, has moved her closer to the board but would like to see Susie taken to an ophthalmologist. She has yet to hear back from Susie’s parents.
§ Roger has received detention three times since the beginning of the school year for bringing inappropriate reading material to class. Because of the graphic nature of the material and the frequency of violations the principal is considering suspension but feels he should speak with Roger’s parents first. Roger’s father, after a week and a half, finally returned the principal’s phone call but simply made some noncommittal noises, ending the phone call with “Well, boys will be boys.”
We all, as parents, fall somewhere on this scale. It is helpful to know the ramifications of our rules or lack-thereof.
This is another one of those cases that can first seem very invasive and inappropriate for you kids’ teacher and school to be prying into. What are they going to do next? A home safety check? (Well… In extreme cases, the school is legally obligated to refer cases to the local Child Safety office so, yes.) You can see where different parenting styles are going to directly effect the relationship your child has with school and their teacher.
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