Bossy, Easygoing, Tiger: what sort of a parent should you try to be?

Samantha Cameron said last year that her eldest child, Nancy, then 11, was keeping a diary of growing up as the prime minister’s daughter. She said of Nancy: “She’s always, like, ‘I’m on chapter five, Daddy. How Your Life as Prime Minister Has Affected Me. Chapter two is when you left me in the pub.’”
Superficially, it would appear that the Camerons run a household that acknowledges (or surrenders) to the idea that, when it comes to children, the age of deference is dead. The notion that parents know best – or, come to that, know anything at all – is not even up for negotiation.
Children in some families are tailoring their own childhoods, technologically savvy, occasionally bumping into their double shift-working parents; like, whatever.
Last week, however, in a major speech at the charity Family Action , David Cameron placed his parenting banner firmly in the territory now colonised by the fiercely competitive mother, American Amy Chua, triggering yet again a debate about which parenting style works best – and the tools families really require to give their children a decent start in life.
Chua is the author of the controversial
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother , published in 2011. In it, she detailed how she reared her daughters, Lulu and Sophia, now at Harvard and Stanford, to alpha levels. The regime included no sleepovers, no extracurricular activities, three hours of music practice a day, and Chua’s constant eagerness to “excoriate, punish and shame”. In short, motherhood operationalised as a full-time gruelling commando course. But is it good for children?
 
Four styles of parenting:

1. Authoritative
Warm, communicative, demanding, responsive. These parents want their children to be assertive, self-regulated and socially responsible. They have freedom of expression, but clear boundaries. This style of parenting tends to produce rounded, competent adults.

2.  Permissive
Warm and accepting, lenient, avoiding confrontation, these parents try to be a friend to their child. Some overcompensate for what they lacked as a child, so they try too hard to give the freedom and material goods they lacked – or are so frazzled or occupied by work that they give material goods in exchange for a child not demanding time and interest.

3. Authoritarian
Strict and controlling. A disciplinarian style that allows no negotiation, little autonomy for a child and no choice. Demanding of a child and not very responsive. Researchers say that, as a result, children tend to be timid, have low self-esteem and to rely to an unusual degree on the voice of authority. Then they may rebel.

4.  Negligent/Uninvolved
These parents demand nothing and give nothing, so there is very little stimulus for a child, limited development and no boundaries. This might amount to physical and emotional cruelty. Parents have little understanding of what a child needs to flourish.
Categories defined by US psychologist Diana Baumrind in the 1960s

Curled from The Guardian.