How We Found Our Parenting Style
“How do I find my parenting style?”
“What kind of parent will I be?”
“How will I raise my kids to be good people?”
Your parenting style is essentially a personal set of guidelines for how you raise your children: how you communicate with your child, how you respond to their emotions, and how you impress particular values and attitudes in your little one (either intentionally or unintentionally). Identifying your parenting style does not translate into a clear checklist of, “To be this type of parent, I just need to do X, Y, and Z.”
However, we found that understanding our parenting style makes us more mindful parents and guides us in the parenting practices (or the specific things we do as parents like imposing schedules or setting boundaries and rules) we employ to foster the home environment we want for our family.
Here are the questions we asked ourselves to help us find our parenting style.
What values do we want our child to have?
I think it’s safe to say that most parents hope their children grow up to be happy, confident, and kind-hearted adults. But in reflecting further on the type of person we hoped our child would become, we hoped they would be curious and open minded with an everlasting interest in learning. We wanted them to have resilience and a can-do attitude. We also hoped they would be loving, thoughtful, and considerate of their family and friends.
What does our ideal household (both in the physical and emotional sense) look like?
Like many other parents, Andrew and I want a peaceful and safe home. To us, that means our household communicates honestly and directly. We aim to have an emotionally stable household that allows for hurt (and big) feelings and offers patient support during those difficult times.
In more of the literal sense, we want a household that is tidy and well-organized. We treat our belongings with respect.
What do we appreciate about our parents, upbringing, and childhood?
Whenever I think of my childhood, I immediately think of our family dinners (6:30 PM every day, except Saturday when the “kitchen is closed”) that deeply bonded my family. My parents also trusted my siblings and me implicitly to make good decisions for ourselves; they also gave us a surprising amount of freedom to explore our town as a young foursome.
Andrew, meanwhile, enjoyed being in nature and having free reign to explore independently or with his friends. He also learned a lot by doing: visiting museums to take in art, participating in the Boy Scouts to appreciate the great outdoors, and working in a photo studio and gallery to ignite his passion for photography.
What do the experts say?
Once we had a clear idea of what we aspired for our home and child, we researched and learned more about the core parenting styles to start putting clinical terms to what we wanted.
In the 1960s, developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind developed her theory that there is a link between the parenting style and a child's behavior and development. She later identified four core parenting styles and their effects on a child's outcome:
Authoritarian - As its name suggests, this parent expects obedience and discipline from their children. Demands their children “do as they’re told.”
Authoritative - An authoritative parent sets clear boundaries and expectations (and their consequences) out for their children, but accounts for their child’s feelings.
Permissive - This parenting style is very lenient (perhaps even to a fault) and aims to be best buds with their children.
Uninvolved - For any myriad of reasons, the uninvolved parent is removed from their child’s day-to-day activities and development and assumes their children can look out for themselves.
We determined that we wanted to be authoritative parents and, from there, learned more about different teaching methods to apply those principles into our home. For our family, we look to these educational philosophies and resources:
Having a clear understanding of our parenting style drew us to these particular resources to ultimately guide us in putting our parenting style into practice by analyzing common real-life scenarios like handling a temper tantrum, establishing clear bedtime routines, and practicing good manners at the dinner table.
For more on how we define our parenting style, check out our blog post on the topic here.