Parenting Styles and Adolescent Development
Summary
Parenting styles are commonly categorised along dimensions of warmth and control, yielding four prototypical approaches: authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent and neglectful. Authoritative parents balance high emotional support with clear behavioural guidance, fostering adolescents’ self-regulation, academic engagement and social competence. Authoritarian and neglectful styles, characterised respectively by high control with low responsiveness and by parental disengagement, tend to undermine emotional well-being and peer relations. Indulgent parenting prioritises warmth over strictness and, in some cultural contexts, equates or even surpasses authoritative approaches in promoting self-esteem and value internalisation. Adolescent perceptions of behavioural autonomy and legitimacy of parental authority mediate parent–child cohesion and conflict. Globally, research highlights the practical application of aligning parental strategies with developmental needs to bolster resilience, mental health and adaptive trajectories during adolescence.
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Parenting Styles and Adolescent Development publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in parenting styles and adolescent development across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Authoritative parenting: A style combining high parental warmth with firm behavioural control and open communication.
Authoritarian parenting: A style marked by strict control, high demands and limited parental responsiveness.
Indulgent parenting: Also called permissive parenting; high warmth with minimal strictness or behavioural regulation.
Neglectful parenting: A style characterised by low warmth and low control, often involving parental disengagement.
Psychological control: Parental strategies that intrude on adolescents’ emotional and cognitive autonomy, such as guilt induction.
References
- Parenting Styles: A Closer Look at a Well-Known Concept. Journal of Child and Family Studies (2018).
- Parenting Styles and Parent–Adolescent Relationships: The Mediating Roles of Behavioral Autonomy and Parental Authority. Frontiers in Psychology (2018).
- Parenting Styles, Internalization of Values and Self-Esteem: A Cross-Cultural Study in Spain, Portugal and Brazil. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2020).
- A Third Emerging Stage for the Current Digital Society? Optimal Parenting Styles in Spain, the United States, Germany, and Brazil. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2019).
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