Parenting Styles Revealed’s main findings and propositions (on pages 16 and 21) are supported by an extensive national survey of parents. Public Agenda, a highly respected non-profit, non-partisan public opinion research organization, conducted the poll in 2002. The survey is titled, “A Lot Easier Said Than Done,” and is described at Public Agenda’s web site, and also in a National Public Radio (NPR) interview of Deborah Wadsworth, Public Agenda’s president.

The workbook and the survey were developed independently by two different organizations. Neither knew about the other’s work, but the findings of each are mutually supportive, thus giving credence to both projects.

In the survey, 1,607 American parents were interviewed. They spoke very candidly of their successes and failures. Many believed that they were not doing a good job of instilling virtues or character traits in their children—even though they said they wanted very much to instill these traits. For example, 83 percent of parents said it is important to teach self-control, but only 34 percent felt they’d done that.

The survey indicates that many parents have certain parenting styles or philosophies that hinder effective parenting and the fostering of desirable character traits in their children. The study, with no attempt to be judgmental or critical, identified and described three styles that hinder—and a fourth that fosters—effective parenting. They are described below.

1. The softies are people who, by their own account, are slow or reluctant to lay down the law, and too quick to give in to what their kids want. They say they are sometimes too tired to be firm, even though they know they should be firm, and so they give in too quickly, or “let things go” that they shouldn’t.

2. The overwhelmed say that they believe there is little they can do to control how their children turn out. They often think children are born with a certain personality and that parents can’t do much about it. They also believe that their own lives are filled with stress, and so they feel overwhelmed as a parent. They are more likely than others to say that their children talk back, are rude, use bad language, or dress sloppily.

3. The best buddies acknowledge that they want to be their children’s friend rather than an authority figure. They are often trying to be different kinds of parents from their own parents, thinking their own parents were too strict and/or distant. So they go in the other direction. They acknowledge that they may do too much explaining to the child, instead of being authoritative and being the parent.

4. The fourth style or group is one that the researchers deemed most successful and labeled “parents-in-chief.” They are willing to lay down the law and they don’t put up with back talk. When they say something, they expect the child to listen. As a consequence, in comparison with others in the sample, their children are much more dependable. They don’t use bad language or talk back. They are less likely to listen to music with inappropriate language. Parents-in-chief comprise 18 percent of the parents, according to the research.

In another body of research, Time magazine and CNN conducted a poll of adult Americans that was reported in the August 2001 issue of Time. The magazine’s cover story was titled, “Do Kids Have Too Much Power?” The poll results: 80 percent said that children are more spoiled than children ten or fifteen years ago. Seventy-five percent said today’s children do fewer chores, and 68 percent said their own children are either “very” or “somewhat” spoiled.

___________________

References to research:

1. Interview with Deborah Wadsworth, Talk of the Nation, NPR, 4 Nov. 2002.

2. “A Lot Easier Said Than Done” study, Public Agenda web site: www.publicagenda.org.

3. “Do Kids Have Too Much Power?” Time magazine, Aug. 2001.