Friday, October 16, 2015

Pleasing the powerful parent

Who is the more powerful parent in your household?

Yes, yes, parenthood should be an equal partnership between two people, but we all know the truth: One parent in the household simply ends up doing more. And that parent is the one who may be influencing their child's self esteem the most.

New research conducted by the University of Sussex has found a link between a child's self-esteem and the parenting style of the dominant parent.

The researchers involved in the study did their best to remove culture from the equation. Instead they looked at how families were structured to find households run by both fathers and mothers with different parenting styles: Controlling, lax, disciplinarian, free-range, nurturing and even smothering.

The results were pretty clear: Whenever children felt negativity from the dominant parent, their self-esteem plummeted - and it didn't matter what the style of the other parent was like. It wasn't enough to overcome the dominant parent's negativity.

So, back to my original question: Who is the more powerful parent in your household? Tell me in the comments. 

2 comments:

  1. ME, unfortunately. As was pointed out, my 5 children definitely feed off of my mood, good or bad. My wife is usually unable to influence them, unless I'm away from home more than a few days. It puts more pressure on me, since I have to be more careful in my actions.

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    1. It's hard to know that you are the parent your children are trying to please - I hope you are able to take a break so that you don't feel the effects of all that pressure.

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