L6ES

Comm Studies

Exposition

Good Day, I'm here to present to you Parenting styles and their effect on student performance in the
Caribbean. "It's not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves,
that will make them successful human beings." A quote from Ann Landers, a famous columnist. In
today's world, everyone is obsessed with being successful and wealthy, but does anyone stop to think
about what makes the wealthy man? Well, researcher, Dianna Baumrind made a link between Parenting
styles and how they can affect their children, while other researchers carried this thought proccess and
began experimenting on how the different parenting styles not only affected how their child behaved
but how they developed and progressed in life.

Firstly, Baumrind classified parents into four different parenting categories based on the amount of
parental control and parental involvement they possessed. These four are the authoritarian style, the
authoritative style, the permissive style and the uninvolved style. The authoritarian style involved high
parental control but a lack of parental involvement. The authoritative style included high levels of
parental control and parental involvement. The permissive style lacked parental control however it
involved parental involvement and lastly, the uninvolved style was void of both categories.

In detail, authoritarian parenting combines high control with little warmth. These parents lay down the
rules and expect them to be followed without discussion. Hard work, respect and obedience are what
authoritarian parents wish to cultivate in their children. There is little compromise between parent and
child because authoritarian parents do not consider children's needs or wishes. For instance, an
authoritarian mother might demand that her child study for three hours every evening, even on
evenings where the child had extra curricular activities, without considering that the child's brain might
already be too tired to process any sort of work.

Next is authoritative parenting which combines a fair degree of parental control with being warm and
responsive to children. Authoritative parents explain rules and encourage discussion. There is always
room for compromise with an authoritative parent as they understand the child and their needs. If we
take the example from before, an authoritative mother might be more lenient and instead of making the
child study on evenings with extra-curricular, she might encourage the child to study for an hour more
on the weekends or regular days.

Following, is the permissive parenting which offers warmth and caring but little parental control. These
parents generally accept their children's behavior and punish them infrequently. They often set rules
with little to no enforcement and punishments meant to last a significant amount of time, usually last a
couple of hours or minutes. Using the previous example again, an indulgent-permissive parent would
allow the child to skip days of study even if there was no extracurricular, simply because it's something
the child wanted to do.

Lastly, is the uninvolved parent. This parent provides neither warmth nor control. Indifferent-uninvolved
parents provide for their children's basic physical and emotional needs but little else. They try to
minimize the amount of time spent with their children and avoid becoming emotionally involved with
them. An uninvolved mother would never have even set study days for their child, and even if they did,
they wouldn’t have cared if their child skipped days or not.

Baumrind began her testing with preschool children. She separated the children in her sample into four
categories. Children with a mature profile, were energetic, emotionally positive towards their peers and
high in curiosity, self- reliance and self control. Dissatisfied children were moody, apprehensive, easily
upset and passively hostile and negative in their relations with peers. Immature children were impulsive,
undercontrolled, and low in self reliance, though more cheerful and resilient than those in group two.
The last group were the misbehaved children. They were very slow to develop, lacking self-esteem,
exhibiting frequent behavior problems and ranking low in happiness. They were also very socially
withdrawn. After interviewing parents, doing home visits and laboratory investigations, Baumrind
concluded that the mature children had authoritative parenting, the dissatisfied children had
authoritarian parenting, the immature children had permissive parents and the misbehaved children
had uninvolved parents.

Upon further investigation, it was found that the children of authoritative parents were still the most
mature after five years. She then determined that a parenting style characterized by warmth and
nurturance, the encouragement of independence, and the setting of firm rules when needed is
associated with positive outcomes in children. Other scientist furthered Baumrind's work, testing to see
if not only the parenting style but also the parents' behavior was involved in the shaping of the child's
behavior. However they found that parental educational level is an important predictor of children’s
educational and behavioral outcomes. But this research came about due to Baumrind's research and
isn't related to my topic.

Finally, the reliability and the validity of my sources can be confirmed. The information came from four
different books. All of the books were written by people with higher education, however a few were not
PhD holders. All of the information was basically the same in each text so I assumed that the information
I correct and reliable. These books are highly recommended to university students which could insinuate
that the information is accurate, easy to read, up to date and valid. The information is very legitimate as
many different sources share the same ideas.

All in all, parenting styles do have a major impact on the success of a child as it can be a determining
factor of a child's personality traits and furthermore, their self-control, ambition and self-esteem. These
traits can determine whether a child has the confidence, the discipline and the will power to succeed in
life, because everyone already has the ability.