Classic Research

Classical Research: Effects of Parenting Styles on Children Development
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Abstract
Parenting styles affect the development and the performance of children in a great way. Parents who learn the art of good parenting early in advance raise healthy kids who are able to deal with various issues of life as they arise at a young age and in adulthood. Different researchers have engaged in the search for truth by studying various mechanisms that show a relationship between parenting styles and kids educational achievements. Other researchers that analyze a wider view of the interaction between parenting and the cognitive, social, and physical development of children have also been done. Baumrind is one of the renowned researchers whose contribution is this field of psychology is undeniable. The researcher presents even parenting styles and analyses each of the styles in relation to kid’s development and educational achievements. The researcher concludes that the best approach to parenting is the use of authoritative style because it produces the most effective results in children. Modern scholars who seek not only to expound on the existing information but also to fill in the gaps of information have advanced the findings of the research further. The continued research on this topic helps counseling psychologists in determining bets therapy skills to employ while dealing with problematic kids.

Classical Research: Effects of Parenting on Children Development
The connection between parenting practices and children development is a topic that has been widely researched over the years.

Psychologists seek to understand such connections for purposes of treatment and ensuring that kids develop healthy relationships with other people in the world. Research has proven that indeed there exists s a strong relationship between how children are raised and their development socially, cognitively and physically. The environment in which a child grew can be discovered by watching their participation in class, by watching the interaction that a particular child has with the rest of the people as well as the ability of the child to exhibit cognitive maturity. Researchers such as Baumrind have done extensive research on the topic and come up with several ideas that have shaped counseling psychology for school going children. The research indicates that parental practices have great impacts on children during adolescent times and the parents who succeed to instill positive attitude to the children at this stage end up creating all rounded people who can survive in any world (Baumrind, 1968). On the contrary, poor parental practices inhibit the growth and development of the child in terms of social skills and cognitive development. Therefore, it is of paramount importance for parents to ensure that their parental styles help in the positive development of the children for a better society.
Baumrind argues that there are sevens styles of parenting that people use to guide their children through life. The parenting styles include authoritative parenthood in which parents are firm, consistent and supportive as well as democratic parenting where the parent and the child are involved in decision-making and free will is highly exercised. Authoritarian-directive and non-authoritarian directive parenting style is where the parents are strict, controlling, traditional, and unsupportive of the kids. Unengaged parenting involves the lack of direction and children are left to guide themselves through life (Baumrind, 1968). Lastly, good enough parenting is a style that includes a certain level of moderation.
Each of these parenting styles produces a certain kind of children and research has proven that children who grow up in an authoritative kind of s family have better management of their social, cognitive, and physical development. Authoritative parenting ensures that there is enough structure to guide the children and at the same time ensure that the loving care of the parents is felt even during disciplinary actions. As a result, kids from these families became appreciative of various aspects of life, which puts them above their counterparts in terms of development. Further, the warmth that the children receive from their parents helps them to cope better with the rules and regulations set up by the school. Kids from such families are more confident as indicated by their highly level of participation in class. According to the researcher, a parent must embrace authoritative parenting to produce well-balanced and best-adjusted kids (Baumrind, 1971).
The other parental styles cannot produce all-round children but are preferred in the development of certain skills. For instance, children who grow up in a non-direction parenthood style are achievement oriented and are better self-regulated than those from other families with different styles. However, these kids show low performance regardless of their desire to achieve certain goals in life (Baumrind, 1968). Additionally, kids from authoritative families oppose drug use and are unlikely to bow to peer-pressure, but they lack social responsibility. In other words, each parental style has something good but only authoritative parenting that produces all round kids, hence the recommendation.
The use of reinforcement whether the punishment of reward as a considerable impact on the social, cognitive and the physical development of the children. Kids copy how to talk, think, and handle difficult situations from their parents. The ability of a person to withhold from saying some things or reacting to a situation that would cause unnecessary consequences depends on his or her upbringing. Kids from authoritative families are better controlled, and they know how to keep their emotions in check. On the contrary, kids from an authoritarian family have difficulty connecting to the world because they often burst into anger and cannot manage their feelings (Baumrind, 1971). In terms of physical development, as much as genetic makeup determine how people grow, the serenity of the environment contributes greatly to the energy levels of a child and buoyancy. Children learn from their parents at a young age which kind of people to associate with and the people they need to avoid (Baumrind, 1968). If parents have poor judgment or are not involved in the kid’s life, then it becomes difficult for the child to develop such social skills even at a later stage in life.
The effects of parental styles on children differ based on gender. Democratic parenthood produces ideal results in the girl child but not in boys. The researchers concluded that the discrepancy is because the boy child requires a bit of rule and structure to attain the full potential while the soft touch on the girl child is enough to push them to their destiny (Weiss & Schwarz, 1996). The boy child is highly motivated by fear while compassion helps to shape the lifestyle of the girl child.
The level of control, maturity demands, parent-child communication, and parental nurturance helps to build or inhibit the development of children in families. For instance, parents who balance between training a child how to make personal decisions and granting the child the opportunity to make personal decisions produced better-controlled individuals who are able to approach problematic issues (Weiss & Schwarz, 1996). As a result, such children perform better in school because they are not intimidated by the difficulty of learning. Moreover, children from authoritative families where control is exerted in a loving environment have less peer affiliation. Parental nurturance is quite instrumental in shaping the lives of the young people at teenage. Communicating effectively with the child helps to build their interpersonal and intrapersonal skills that help to shape their characters during teenage. However, as much as every aspect of parenting is vital in shaping the lives of the children, it is important that parents avoid over-emphasizing one aspect of parenting at the expense of another because that will only produce unbalanced kids.
Baumrind’s studies have considerable importance in the field of psychology because they have helped in forming the background on which other researchers can base their arguments about the relationship between parenting and child development. The data is gathered from the children themselves thus making the results viable. Baumrind does not just offer theories to parenting or analyze the styles without giving the parents a viable option. She strongly advocates for the authoritative mode of parenting and gives the parents several tactics that can be employed to ensure that the style of parenting achieves high-level results. The use of different groups of people in the research ensures that all the ethnicities are covered. Therefore, the finding of the research can be generalized to an entire population.
The researcher interviewed the parents and children separately and watched the interaction of each group at a family level to determine the nature of the parental style. As such, the different styles of parenting as indicated by Baumrind are not based on theory but the reality of the matter. The ability to analyze the relation between parents and the children at home makes the results of the study viable and useful in advising parents of the best mechanisms to employ with their children as well as the approached that psychologist need to use in guiding and managing problematic kids.
The researcher has presented the problem and the variables of the study in a simple manner making it easy for the audience to understand the study. The use of simple language and simple techniques is ideal for the study because the results affect the entire population, which comprises of both the learned and the unlearned. Parenthood is something that each should take seriously and so the use of the simple language helps to propagate the purpose of the study. The results of the study are discussed comprehensively in relation to the hypothesis (Baumrind, 1968). As such, it the reader is able to relate the literature with the primary data and make the own judgment. The subject of the study is one that each can easily relate to by analyzing own social, cognitive and physical development. The researcher uses practical daily aspects to make the research and the findings more practical and relatable to the audience.
Recent studies have developed the findings of Baumrind in various ways. Several researchers seek to test the validity of the results presented by Baumrind while others seek to add to the existing knowledge. Recent research has done a commendable job in encouraging the right parenting mechanisms to parents and equipping counseling psychologists with idea research to use while handling problematic children. All the studies agree on that fact that parenting styles do have a significant impact on the physical, cognitive, and social development of a child. However, the magnitude of impact that different parenting practices have on the children varies from one research to another.
Aye, Lau and Nie conducted a study in the year 2008 to determine whether the relationship between authoritative parenting and student’s outcomes is mediated by student’s self-efficacy and task value. The research was conducted among adolescent students in grade 9. The students were selected from thirty-nine schools in Singapore. The research proved that parenting style determined the engagement of students in the classrooms. Children from authoritative families showed high levels of engagement in comparison to their counterparts. Better school performance and stronger engagements were registered from students raised in authoritative families (Aye, Lau & Nie, 2008). The findings of the study support the original findings of Baumrind and other classical researches on the topic but with a few discrepancies. For instance, the results were consistent among all ages and classes. As opposed to Baumrind’s findings were the girls showed better results than the boys, the current research showed the uniformity of findings regardless of the gender of the people. On the other hand, the authoritative style of parenting did nit produce positive results among students from the Africa-American population. The study concludes that self-efficacy and the value that the students attach to their students acts as mediators to the relationship between parenting style and students outcomes (Aye, Lau & Nie, 2008). Moreover, the ability of the locality in which the family lives affecting the relationship between parenting style and students outcome comes out in the research.
Besharat, Azizi, and Poursharifi conducted a study in 2011 to determine the relationship between parenting styles and children academic achievements. The study was conducted among the Iranians. A total of 371 students, 191 girls, and 180 boys were used for the study. In addition, about 342 fathers and 364 mothers were also interviewed. The study found out that parenting influenced children’s academic achievements with those from authoritative families showing positive achievements while those from authoritarian families showing negative academic achievements (Besharat, Azizi & Poursharifi, 2011). The study confirms the classical results and provides a platform upon which other modern researchers can base their future studies.
Parenting styles have an undeniable effect on the cognitive, social, and physical development of children. Among all the available parenting styles, authoritative style of parenting has been advocated greatly because of its ability to produce all rounded kids who can perform well both in and out of class. The understanding of how parenting affects the development of children helps psychologists to come up with better approaches to dealing with problematic kids. In addition, the studies on the topic help parents to abandon parenting styles that are not beneficial to the children and embrace authoritative styles of parenting for effective child development.

References
Aye, K., Lau, S. & Nie, Y. (2008). Relations of Authoritative Parenting Style to Student Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Self-Efficacy and Task Value. American Educational Research Association, 1-12.
Baumrind, D. (1968). Child Care Practices Anteceding Three Patterns Of Preschool Behavior. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75, 43-88.
Baumrind, D. (1971). Current Patterns of Parental Authority. Developmental Psychology, 4, 99-102.
Besharat, M., Azizi, K. & Poursharifi, H. (2011). The Relationship between Parenting Styles and Children’s Academic Achievement in a Sample of Iranian Families. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 15 (1), 1280-1283.
Weiss, L. & Schwarz, J. (1996). The Relationship between Parenting Types and Older Adolescents’ Personality, Academic Achievement, Adjustment and Substance Use. Child Development, 6, 2101-14.