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Chris Pretrick

Mrs. DeBock

English IV Honors

November 9, 2017

Parental Influence on Child Development

Modern society is giving more importance to parenting styles. It represents the different

approaches parents use to raise their children. The main cause of majority of the mental health

problems that emerge in adolescence are related to parenting styles. Most parents use a variety of

styles depending upon their culture and societal demands. Parents are among the most important

people in the lives of young children. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the

earliest years of life, when childrens brains are developing rapidly and when nearly all of their

experiences are created and shaped by their parents and by the positive or difficult circumstances

in which the parents find themselves. Parents play a significant role in helping children build and

refine their knowledge and skills, as well as their learning expectations, beliefs, goals, and

coping strategies. Parental roles and and parenting styles have a significant impact on defining a

childs mental health, behavior, and cognitive capabilities.

First of all, good parenting is parenting that prepares children to meet the demands of the

specific culture or subculture in which they live. Parenting style is a determinant factor in child

development. It affects psychological and social functioning of the children. Parenting style is

largely affected by the influence of ones own parents. Temperament, educational achievement,

culture, socioeconomic status and the influence of their spouse affects parenting style as well.

According to Belsky, Temperament of the parent and the child affects style of parenting, and

the mother and father may differ in style as well. The effectiveness of parental styles are
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considered by two dimensions of parenting, acceptance / responsiveness and demanding /

control. Parental acceptance / responsiveness refers to the extent to which parents intentionally

foster individuality, self regulation, and self-assertion by being attuned, supportive, and

acquiescent to childrens special needs and demands (Baumrind 2). Parental demandingness

refers to the claims parents make on children to become integrated into the family whole, by

their maturity demands, supervision, disciplinary efforts and willingness to confront the child

who disobeys (Baumrind 2). While conducting a longitudinal study, Baumrind found that

preschool children, with authoritative parents, are best adjusted. They were cheerful, socially

responsible, self reliant, achievement oriented and cooperative with adults and peers. Children of

authoritarian parents tended to be moody and seemingly unhappy, easily annoyed, relatively

aimless, and not very pleasant to be around. Children of permissive parents were often impulsive

and aggressive, especially if they were boys. They tended to be bossy and self centred,

rebellious, lacking in self control, rather aimless and quite low in independence and achievement.

Parenting style is a determinant factor in child development. It affects psychological and social

functioning of the children.

Furthermore, research on family processes in relation to children's behavior and schools

achievement has been active the past few years. Researchers who have examined the relationship

of work conditions such as work hours, work schedule, job demands, job supervision and job

promotion have concluded some important associations with maternal or parental feelings of role

conflict, her parenting style and parental participation on children's school work. The multiple

effects of work conditions on families well-being have also shown positive association with

children's school achievement especially among lower income children (Talib 1) Gottfried, a

german psychologist, introduced a theory, Proximal Home Development Theory. Gottfried

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suggests, proximal home environment comprises the cognitive, social-emotional and physical

formulation available to children in their family relationship. Research was conducted based on

the assumption of direct effects between parental employment and child cognitive development

without recognition that effects were mediated by proximal home environment. Many of these

studies were conducted using psychoanalytic approach in which mother was considered to be

central importance to childs psychological development. The outcomes of this study support the

previous studies that there is no difference in outcomes between fulltime and part-time employed

mothers, and the data consistently showed that maternal employment status was not significant

for childs development across age, development domains and gender (Talib 15). This study

indicates that children of employed mothers are equivalent in their development in the cognitive,

social emotional, academic, motivational, and behavioural domains from infancy through

adolescence. Rather, regardless of maternal employment status, this study indicates that the

proximal environment itself involves a variety of experiences provided and that parental

involvement is related to childs development.

Finally, Parenting styles, that is, parents typical attitudes and behaviors which form the

emotional climate in which parents raise their children , have been suggested to play an

important role in childrens social and emotional development. affective and warm parenting, as

well as behavioral control deployed by parents have been shown to be related to low levels of

problem behaviors and depressive symptoms among children. High parental psychological

control has been found to be associated with increased anxiety, distress, and depressive

symptoms among both children and adolescents. In a recent studies, psychologists mainly focus

on the behavioral-expressive component of emotional development, that is, childrens positive

and negative emotions observed by their parents (Maryam 2). The behavioralexpressive
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component of emotion has been suggested to be a significant factor in child development,

interpersonal behavior, and social communication , because these external emotional signs

provide clues about childrens experiences and impact their social interactions. Maryam

suggests, positive and negative emotions are functional in certain situations, frequent

expressions of negative emotions may have maladaptive consequences. Frequent expression of

negative emotions may reflect difficulties in emotion regulation, and such difficulties have been

related not only to social difficulties and criminal behavior but also to clinical disorders later on

in life. Frequent expressions of positive emotions, in turn, have been shown to be associated with

social competence. Childrens early emotional development takes place in the dynamic

interaction between the parent-child relationship and the environment that they are developing in

(Maryam 3). Moreover, a high level of parental psychological control has been shown to lead to

internalizing problems, such as depression, anxiety, and internalized distress.

Parental roles and and parenting styles have a significant impact on defining a childs

mental health, behavior, and cognitive capabilities. Parents are the most important figures in a

childs life. The family environment is critical in a childs upbringing and if there is problems the

child is most likely going to suffer the consequences. Children who were raised with permissive

parents and authoritative parenting will have completely different behavior patterns and

cognitive abilities. Parenting styles and family environment is a determinant for shaping the

characteristics of children.

Work Cited

Joseph, Mary V. "Impact of Parenting Styles on Child Development." Scholarly Articles.

Joseph M. V., John J., 23 Jan. 2003. Web.

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Johar, Zulkifli Mohamad, and Maharam Mamat. "World Journal of Social Sciences."

Effects of Parenting Style on Children's Development 1.2 (2011): 14-35. Web.

Zarra-Nezhad, Maryam, and Kaisa Aunola Noona Kiuru. "Parenting Styles and

Childrens Emotional Development during the First Grade: The Moderating Role of

Child Temperament."