Effects of Authoritarian Parenting Style

Parenting could be fun, exhausting, mind boggling or even a learning experience for many. They say, none of the parents are perfect in the world. Each one of them makes some mistake or the other in their way of bringing up kids. Hence parenting, when taken as an educative journey, turns out to be quite an interesting episode that lasts a lifetime, if not more

Authoritarian parenting style is a way, when parents want themselves to be treated as a big authority by their own children. These parents do not care to be responsive even to their children’s emotional and other requirements. They always try to enforce discipline by punishment or even abusing.

All parents want to have disciplined little ones. They take pride in flaunting their children’s obedience wherever they go. But sometimes parents who adopt the authoritarian style of raising the kids have extremely high standards of behavior and respect which does more harm than good in the bargain.

Authoritarian parenting involves being in control and exerting that control on their children. Parents who set these strict rules do it to keep order and do this without any warm emotion or affection. They try hard to set standards of behavior and are harshly critical of their children if they fail to meet those standards. They actively tell their children what to do and how to behave, and their children have to accept it.

The military rule at home doesn’t work always. Authoritarian parents focus on shaping, controlling and weighing up the behavior of their children by using a set code of conduct that is based on the child having total respect for authority.

Parents place a high value on obedience as a good thing, and will use forceful measures to ensure that their child’s behavior is maintained at all times. These kind of authoritarian parents show little signs of flexibility and expect their children to live up to the set standards of discipline all the time, without fail.

Consequences and Effects of authoritarian parenting style

• Children who are subjected to authoritarian parenting rarely learn to think for themselves and are often confused about what they should do and what they should not.
• They struggle endlessly to understand why their parents behave the way they do.
• These kids generally have low confidence level and self esteem, because they never feel emotionally attached with their parents and don’t be able to express their real feelings to anybody.
• Generally, it is also seen, when these children come to the age of teen or puberty, they become rebel to their own parents, which is not a good sign for the society.
• One of the bad consequences is, these children may also become authoritarian parents in future.

Authoritarian parenting is outdated and not suited to modern life and society, it is not considered to be an appropriate parenting style for today’s family. Hence the best way to bring up your children is definitely not what we discussed few sentences above but a more practical and prudent or sensible way which treats all the members in a family as equal. After all, the parents don’t wish to treat their little ones as slaves. Do they?