Childrearing: A Personal Response
I have been fascinated by different parenting styles since I first learned about them in my Lifespan Psychology class senior year of high school. Ever since learning about the different parenting styles, I have made an effort to observe the different parenting styles I come in contact with at home in United States. In my own family, I notice how my parents used the authoritative parenting style. When I would misbehave as a small child, I would be spanked. My parents made an intentional effort to spank me in a way that would alert me that I had deliberately done something wrong without inflicting any unnecessary pain. When I grew to school age, my parents stopped spanking me but rather took away my privileges, such as television watching and eating sweets, for a period of time. My parents gave me autonomy in that they warned me that they would take away privileges in order to give me an opportunity to correct my behavior before being punished. Lastly, my parents give my brother and me a high level of independence now that we are grown adults. Since having graduated college, my brother has likely made several decisions that my parents would not affirm. Because my brother lives independently from my parents, he is responsible for incurring the costs of his decisions, freeing my parents of those costs. Because my parents are freed from the consequences of my brother’s decisions, they have decided not to tell him what is right and wrong. Giving grown children a high level of independence is characteristic of the authoritative parenting style (Baumrind, 1971).
In addition, I have noticed how my aunts and uncles have parented their children. Since having studied the different parenting styles, I have noticed that my aunts and uncles are largely permissive parents. When we were young, I rarely saw my aunts and uncles get upset or discipline their children when my cousins deliberately misbehaved. As they got older, I also noticed that my aunts and uncles did not prevent their children’s poor behavior if it did not physically harm them. A year ago, my cousin went to several bars with some of my other cousins in one night with a fake driver’s license saying he was at least twenty-one years old when he was really only nineteen. The next day at a family gathering, I overheard my aunt, who is my now 20-year-old cousin’s mother, asking him if he had successfully been served alcohol at each bar! She even encouraged his poor behavior rather than even alerting him that what he had done was objectively wrong. Because of my experience watching my aunts and uncles discipline my cousins as they have grown, I have developed a negative bias toward the permissive parenting style. I dislike how my cousins have been able to disobey rules and behave poorly without incurring any punishments that I can see.
Coming into Europe Term, I brought my negative bias toward the permissive parenting style into this study. My positive bias toward the authoritative parenting style also led me be happy to see that both Austrian and Irish parents practice the authoritative parenting style. I would like to consider myself to be a fairly wise, disciplined, and independent person, and I owe my independence and self-discipline largely to the way my parents raised me. Baumrind (1966) found that children with authoritative parents were found to be more self-reliant, assertive, and mature than children raised by permissive or authoritarian parents.
At the same time, assertiveness and self-reliance are qualities that are highly valued in a highly individualistic and masculine culture such as the United States. I brought those values into Europe Term thinking that other cultures would value those qualities just as much as Americans do. If the authoritative parenting style is the best way to achieve instilling those qualities into a child, why would parents not want to raise their children with an authoritative parenting style? I realized that not all cultures want their children to grow to be incredibly independent and success driven. Although Juli’s mother was happy Juli had found a job she enjoyed in Vienna, she also hoped her daughter would eventually move back to Germany to be close to her. While I personally do not think that using the permissive parenting style is the best way to raise a child, there are certain cultures in which children are not meant to move out of the house when they grow to be adults. The permissive parenting style may be more ideal in collectivistic cultures in which independence is not as highly valued.
As I think about how different cultures may use different parenting styles in order instill different values into their children, I realize that God created all his people differently in their different cultures. In my family, my parents truly hope that I maintain my relationship with Jesus that they tried to instill in me by bringing me to church each Sunday. The Irish parents who attended Hillside Evangelical Church also made a strong effort to instill faith into their children from a young age in the hopes that they would continue to walk in faith as adults. In Austria, I did not notice parents making such a conscious effort to instill faith into their children’s lives. While that lack of visible effort may be due to there being fewer Christian parents in Austria, Austrian parents may also want their children to find their own faith on their own. Fortunately, regardless of any human efforts, the Holy Spirit is faithful in drawing each person into a relationship with Jesus who needs to meet him.
References
Baumrind, D. (1966). Effects of authoritative control on child behavior. Child Development, 37, 887–907.
Baumrind, D. (1971). Current Patterns of Parental Authority. Developmental Psychology Monograph, 4(1, Part 2).