Parents are most effective when working side-by-side to deal with misbehaviour
There Authoritarian Authorative Is Parenting And A Between Difference
An 11-year-old child steals from the local shop. He is caught on CCTV. For the parents, it is highly stressful — not least because they each have a different perspective on how to deal with it.
Mum says it’s so unlike him, so something must be going on. She talks calmly to the child, asking, ‘What was going on for you? You didn’t need this thing — don’t we give you enough?’
Dad’s coming from a different angle — ‘You can never steal, no matter what’s going on’. He sees the incident as a real breach of trust within family and community and says very clear boundaries need to be imposed. He grounds the boy.
Senior paediatric clinical psychologist Claire Crowe says when there’s a gap between two parental approaches to a child’s misbehaviour, it can feel like a real dilemma. “But it’s about finding the truth in both. Some parents have a more compassion-focused approach, while others [emphasise] setting limits and boundaries and teaching right from wrong.
“And in the real world, children will experience both — those who are sensitive to their needs, and those who push back. [So] both [parenting] positions have merit, and both are necessary.”
Crowe says even when our co-parent has the same general parenting style as us, we will still each parent a bit differently. “But if both parents are coming from a place of loving the child, there isn’t a bad parenting style.”
In the 1960s, psychologist Diana Baumrind identified three main parenting styles: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative. Dr Tara Kelly, project leader with Tusla’s Springboard Family Support Service, a community-based service for parents and children in Loughlinstown, Co Dublin, says the authoritarian parenting style tends to be demanding, confrontational and punitive.
“It expects unconditional respect for the parent and is concerned with controlling the child, so the child is powerless. The focus is on disciplinary actions. It leads to control battles, particularly when the child reaches adolescence. [It sees] a problem located in the child, as opposed to in the relationship.”
Crowe says authoritarian parenting sees children as mini-adults. “But children are not mini-adults,” she states.
Permissive parenting is at the other end of the spectrum. “It’s very warm, engaged, undemanding, with few limits on the child’s behaviour,” says Kelly.
Crowe says permissive parenting seeks to “befriend the child”. Children do need friends, she says – but with their peer group. “They need parents to support them, to give structure, to set boundaries, to teach them how to be in the world from the social point of view. Permissive parenting expects children to find their own way. They won’t without guidance.”
Crowe sees the adverse fallout of permissive parenting in hospital clinics. “I see it with children with medical conditions, like diabetes. The child’s condition requires following a medical regimen. Suddenly the parents have to do things very deliberately to keep the child well. That shift is problematic because the original permissive parenting style won’t fit anymore, and the child is experiencing Mum and Dad with expectations and ultimatums.”
However, decades of research on the authoritative parenting style has linked it to higher self-esteem in children and better educational outcomes and relationships. “This style is both responsive and demanding. Boundaries are positively communicated to the child. Limits are very clearly defined and they’re rational, not punitive. It comes with respect and support for the child,” explains Kelly.
Crowe says authoritative parenting both teaches children how to behave — and connects with them when they are sad. “It doesn’t see them as mini-adults but supports them to become the adults they can be.”
In the 1990s, Baumrind found that adolescents viewed authoritarian parents as arbitrary or unjust. They saw permissive and unengaged parents as lacking influence. By contrast, authoritative parents were viewed as influential, reasonable, and just.
Kelly says it is not necessarily a problem if two parents have different parenting styles. But it can become problematic when demands on parenting increases — such as when the child presents with a behaviour challenge. “When the child starts to kick back a little, or do something that the parents see as misbehavior, this can be when they start to disagree about how to respond. And each parent can then [retreat] into the position they’re more aligned with, take a more extreme version of that approach.
“So there can be conflict around how to deal with the issue, whether screen time, school work, drinking. And you might see a father saying ‘you’re way too soft on him’, or a mother saying ‘you’re far too hard on him’.”
She gives the example of school avoidance, where one parent might say ‘This is ridiculous — in my day you’d never refuse to go to school’ — and the other’s approach is ‘Oh, they’re finding it too hard’, particularly if the child is neuro-divergent or their mental health is poor. Or a child has been caught drinking and one parent wants to punish by stopping their pocket money or grounding them, and the other thinks that is too harsh, arguing ‘this happens with all children’.
“The more challenging the behaviour, the more parents tend to split into different styles,” says Kelly, adding that punishment and consequences are a big source of disagreement for parents. “Parents tend to get really wrapped up in these and it sometimes [leads to] consequences that are illogical.”
Kelly says when parents get entrenched in polar parenting positions, they just meet conflict with more conflict. “It weakens parental authority. It shifts focus onto the parents’ conflict. Parents can feel frustrated, resentful, and unsupported by each other. It causes a split in the family—parents can start to work against each other. Whereas when they work together, it’s stronger scaffolding for the child.”
Kelly supports parents' being more aligned in their approach, as opposed to being split, which simply dilutes their authority. “It’s about recognising they are in different corners and that they are likely both have something to offer — and that their approach might need to be packaged differently.”
She recommends parents sit down together and talk. “Ask ‘how are we going to respond to this?’. Plan your response together because it is always better to respond than to react. Make the agreement between the parents first, and then communicate that clearly to the child in a calm way.”
Crowe encourages celebrating differences in parenting style. “But if you’re at different ends, how can you breach that gap? We don’t want the differences to be so overt that there’s a chasm.”
She recommends looking at the ways in which both styles complement one another. She also suggests each taking turns to be — for the child — the ‘feelings-focused’ parent and the ‘boundary-setting’ one. “Parenting is about being connected and staying connected with your child. So how about letting Dad take a turn at being the compassionate parent, and Mum be the one to say ‘it’s not OK to not do your homework’.
“You can often predict what issues may come up. Like the end of sixth-class school disco. If the answer to your child’s wanting to go is no, ask the other parent: ‘Can you lead on this one because it’s important that I’m not always the ‘no’ person.”
It's crucial, says Crowe, that the child sees both parents working together. “We know from research that 15-month-old children will choose which parent to go to with a request. They’re so attuned to each parent that they’ll spot the weak link. But we want them to reach to both parents, to know that both offer something of value.”
Such a unified parenting approach takes a lot of communication, says Crowe. “It takes daily conversation and work. It means taking time to say ‘Gosh, that was a huge tantrum today — is there a way we could have done things differently?’ Or, ‘Oh, I see you’ve allowed her to go to that gig. I wasn’t going to. How are we going to avoid this happening again?’”
It’s about each parent minding the other, says Crowe, so that neither feels alienated.
When two parents — each with a slightly, or very, different parenting style – merge the best of both, they are more collaborative and it is better for the child. Why? Because, says Kelly, “working together, they have broader shoulders”.
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