Rate my Parenting

Yes, there are different parenting styles, but outside your own children, none of them is any of your business.

Did you know that your parenting style fits into one of four categories? Well, apparently it’s true. According to various human behavioural scientists such as Baumrind, Maccoby and Martin, there are four broad styles of parenting: authoritarian, permissive, uninvolved and authoritative which in themselves are a combination of two dimensions: how responsive (read warm) you are and how demanding and controlling (AKA strict) you are.

The truth is though, real-life never fits neatly into a segmented digest, and many of us are a combination of all these things at any given time, depending on the circumstances and the pressures we are under. However there is truth in the idea that we do have a personality of a kind in our parenting, and it is as specific to each and every one of us as is our personality type in general.

There is the assumption though, that growing up with the same background, and even in the same house, that you would, by and large, develop perhaps similar parenting styles or at least have the same base values. But actually the reality turns out to be something quite different. The parenting styles of siblings can vary so differently that you may have more in common with a complete stranger in terms of your approach than you do to those closest to you in nature.

And it can be a source of conflict. Parenting is a space laden with judgement (none more so than the judgement you lay on yourself) and it has only gathered pace. In the US for instance, parents have been arrested for letting their children walk to the park alone or for leaving a toddler in a car for a few minutes unattended. Even back in 2015, a 6 and 10-year-old who were, with permission, walking to school, got picked up by the police and the parents put on a “safety plan” detailing the children’s 24-hour supervision.

In Britain, one in five children has been reported to social services. One in five. While you can’t overlook that there is some degree I’m sure of genuine concern in this, I think there is also a certain amount of fear-mongering that has attributed to a heightened sense of danger and so moral framing. According to a study in the US, an inherent judgmental attitude toward other parents is particularly on the up when it comes to a perceived sense of risk and a moral policing. So while our parenting style may be informed by who we are, it also greatly influenced by the societal shifts around us.

Part of the increased judgement is I think, driven by a greater pressure to be successful as parents and so we also have a need to reaffirm we are doing a good job by comparing ourselves with what we see as a less successful approach. But we can’t ignore too that we have become an increasingly rating-obsessed culture. We are rating junkies, from Tripadvisor to apps to approval numbers. Even the fuzzy world of yoga sends you a Rate your Teacher email to your inbox before you’ve even changed out of your trackies. We are hooked on what other people think of us, and our children are a perfect conduit for delivering a real sense of underachieving.

And while most parents are just trying to usher these unique half-formed personalities through to adulthood in one piece, different approaches to that can cause real conflict.

Nowhere more so than within your own family. There is perhaps no greater crestfallen feeling than that of a sense of disapproval by your own parents on your parenting style – as if you have choked off the family tradition and legacy at the root, cashed in the family silver, and defaced your grandmothers most treasured memory.

The irony is though that the increased sanctimonious environment that parents now operate within is cramping both their, and their kids, style. Kid’s freedoms are greatly reduced for fear you scandalise the neighbourhood by sending them to the shops by themselves, which means we are hothousing them more and increasing the pressure on us as parents to deliver their every need. Grandparents then see it as an overindulgent approach, but in fact, their judgement is just another layer upon the already highly scrutinised world parents occupy.

As the youngest of three girls, my parenting odyssey has come last in my immediate family, and I have definitely felt under the microscope at times. Silences around certain meltdowns can be profound, with books on how to parent better recommended. I think it is fair to say, I am the parenting black sheep of the family. And it has, as times, put a real strain on what are largely really close relationships with family.

The truth of it is that with every collection of individuals or unit comes its own dynamic. A great deal of that is informed by a kind of personal and collective survival, for some that’s a routine executed with military precision, for others, it is a scheduling masterclass so no minute is unaccounted for, or it’s having everything in the house in its right place. Most of us though are just responding to the hand we are dealt, and the personalities we bring into the world. And for that, there is no one size that fits all approach.

One thing no one needs is the occasional side-eye approach. From teachers, friends, neighbours, or family. Offer advice only if asked. If someone a parent is struggling, make them dinner, drop off some wine. Take the kids for ice cream. A huge amount of our abilities to be better parents is determined by our bandwidth, and some of us are more fortunate in that than others. And above all, on the dark days, in the eponymous words of American educator Bill Ayers, remember: “Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.” and on the even darker ones, remember Bette Davis, “If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.”

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