Authoritative Parents Earn Kudos

Three-year-old Nick’s response to his new baby sister was to poke and prod her to the point of harm. Not only was his sister distraught by his sadistic curiosity, but so was his mother, who didn’t know the best way to stop it. Should she give him “time outs,” spank him, or just ignore him when he attacked his sister?

Each parenting book, each friend Terese Lohmeier consulted had a different answer. Sound familiar? Every parent confronts this discipline dilemma in one form or another. In each decade, “experts” from grandmothers to psychiatrists have had different ideas on how to rule the roost. But nobody had a crystal ball to forecast how children would turn out.

Now Psychologist Diana Baumrind and her colleagues at the UC Berkeley have fashioned a crystal ball of sorts. In a 12-year longitudinal study, they tracked children from preschool to high school to see what effects their parents’ discipline style had on their characters.

In the 1960s, the California researchers went into the homes of nearly 150 predominantly white, middle-class families and videotaped interactions between the parents and their 3-year-old children. From this information, the researchers turned up three main types of discipline strategies:

--Authoritarian (do it because I say so);

--Authoritative (do it for this reason);

--Permissive (do whatever you want).

If a child throws a temper tantrum because he wants a candy bar, for example, an authoritarian parent would deny him the candy bar without explanation. An authoritative parent, in contrast, would also probably not give the child the candy bar, but would explain that he couldn’t have it because it was bad for his teeth. Or she might bargain with the child (you can have it after you finish your dinner). A permissive parent would just let the child have the candy bar to avoid confrontation. When they returned 12 years later, the researchers found the three types of parenting styles molded three dramatically different types of kids.

The worst off, they discovered, were the children of permissive parents. These immature youths had low self-esteem, a hard time getting along with peers and trouble doing their school work. They tended to be promiscuous and had the heaviest drug use.

The traditional style of authoritarian parents also tended to backfire by the time their children reached adolescence. These youngsters were also immature, showed poor self-esteem and weren’t motivated to do well in school. They scored the poorest on verbal and math achievement tests. Although these teens had some of the lowest levels of drug or alcohol use, many, especially the girls, were obviously unhappy and problem-ridden.

But the youths with authoritative parents were outstandingly well-adjusted. They were mature, happy, motivated, independent, socially adept, and showed little problem behavior. Children of authoritative parents scored the highest on academic achievement tests.

Authoritative discipline comes out the winner, according to Baumrind, because well-explained and consistently enforced limits set by authoritative parents teach the child how to think and make good decisions on his own. These children seem to develop a deeper attachment to standards than children of authoritarian parents who are just taught to obey.

But authoritative parenting requires more effort than the traditional do-as-I-say discipline. Parents have to step back from their own personal anger over a child’s misbehavior in order to consider the child’s point of view.

“I tend to be an authority with my son,” says Kerry Wiedemann, mother of a 3-year-old, “but sometimes I have to think twice and say to myself ‘OK, he’s a person too--what’s his opinion?’ ”

Does the two-career family have the time and energy for authoritative parenting?

“If I had my druthers,” says Terry Rybold-Weingrod, a social worker with two kids, “I wouldn’t want to discipline at all, because in the limited time I have together with my children, I want us to enjoy each other.”

But Ellen Greenberger of the University of California, Irvine, discovered that the authoritative style of parenting was used most commonly by mothers who were highly committed to both work and parenting. She found little evidence that a parent’s investment in work occurs at the expense of her investment in her children.

None of these studies however tackle some of the more pressing discipline concerns of parents--should I spank or use a time-out; how can I get Junior to clean his room.

Although no one has assessed the long-term ramifications of spanking, short-term studies show that it’s often not necessary. One study showed that consistent use of a one-minute time-out for three weeks slashed by more than half the amount of problem behaviors shown by a group of institutionalized children.

“Punishment doesn’t have to be severe to be effective,” says Gerald Patterson, a psychologist with the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene, Ore.

No matter what the style, it also helps to have a sense of humor about parenting.

Rybold-Weingrod recalls a time when her daughter stormed off to her room after a time-out order. Five minutes later when Rybold-Weingrod went into her own room, she found lying on her desk a note from her daughter. “MOM IS STOOPID,” it read.

DO’S AND DON’TS OF DISCIPLINE DO :

* Set consistent and logical limits.

* Enforce limits.

* Explain reasons for limits.

* Consider child’s point of view when setting limits. DON’T :

* Confuse child by punishing behavior one day, letting it pass the next.

* Punish too harshly or not at all.

* Set arbitrary limits.

* Ignore bad behavior.