By: Anwitha Sriramoju
Attachment, an emotional bond formed between one person and another. Attachment between people can affect others in various ways from how an individual reacts to future events and how an individual carries themselves. One attachment-relationship that affects a person the greatest is the relationship between a child and their parent. Psychologists said that attachment styles like secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized emerge from parent-child relationships during childhood.
There are three main types of parenting style: authoritarian, authoritative, and uninvolved. The style that works the best is authoritative parenting. Authoritative parenting tends to work the best because it's all about balance. Parents maintain a strong structure of boundaries and expectations while still being supportive. This strong structure later helps the child to gain a secure attachment style where children feel emotionally safe and confident in their ability to explore the world. Kids whose parents follow this authoritative parenting style tend to have better self esteem, confidence, emotional regulation and perform better academically. On the other hand, the authoritarian parenting style is all about rules, and discipline. In parenting styles like these there is a great lack of communication as most decisions and agreements are solely made by the parent. Children with parents who have an authoritarian parenting style follow the rules out of fear and when the children grow up they tend to carry themselves with an insecure attachment style that affects their self-confidence and often leads to sudden outbursts. Finally, an uninvolved parenting style creates attachment styles like disorganized and avoidant in children. Children who have grown up with this parenting style have minimal support or guidance, which causes them to feel emotional insecurity, trouble trusting others, and can lead the child to grow up and believe that emotional closeness is unnecessary.
I agree with how there are distinct types of parenting styles. However, something that I personally do not agree with is the idea that there is a "set" of characteristics that result from each parenting style. I feel like there are other factors, like the actual personalities of the children, that further impact the traits that result from these various styles.