America's Parenting Style Essay

Which best suites America’s parenting style: Responsiveness or Demandingness

In America there are four major types of parenting styles most associate with; Authoritarian, Authoritative, Neglectful/Indifferent, and Permissive. Each of those parenting styles vary in its level of demandingness and responsiveness. Demandingness is the expectations a parent sets for their child; and responsiveness is how involved the parent is in the child’s life, but which is more important? According to our e-text, Diana Baumrind shaped these four major parenting styles depending on the demandingness and responsiveness provided to the child by their parent. When putting these parenting styles into their own categories and rating its levels of demandingness and responsiveness Baumrind in no way states which parenting style is more favorable than the other. Neither demandingness nor responsiveness is more important in parenting because they should both balance each other. First let’s view the levels of the four parenting styles in demandingness and responsiveness. Starting off with Authoritarian, they are exceptionally high in demandingness and low and responsiveness. Authoritative parents are equally as high in demandingness but also high in responsiveness. Neglectful/Indifferent parents

First Authoritarian, since they are high in demandingness their expectations for their child are tremendous. They are those parents who have your best interest at heart but sometimes have a hard way of showing it. As reported by Vanderbilt’s Psychology department, these types of parents usually set goals that are out of their child’s reach and also depend heavily on disciplining their child in order to teach them a lesson. Being that this parenting style is low in responsiveness they are not the type of parent you would talk to about your