A Third Emerging Stage for the Current Digital Society? Optimal Parenting Styles in Spain, the United States, Germany, and Brazil

Abstract

We propose a new paradigm with three historical stages for an optimal parenting style (i.e., indulgent parenting style), which extends the traditional paradigm of only two stages (i.e., authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles). The three stages concur, at the same time, in different environments, context, and cultures. We studied the third stage for optimal parent–child relationships through the offspring’s personal and social well-being, with four adolescent samples from 11 to 19 years old (52.2% girls) from Spain (n = 689), the United States (n = 488), Germany (n = 606), and Brazil (n = 672). The offspring’s personal well-being was measured through self-esteem (academic, social, emotional, family, and physical), while social well-being was measured with the internalization of self-transcendence (universalism and benevolence) and conservation values (security, conformity, and tradition). The parent–child parenting style was measured through parental warmth and strictness, and the adolescents’ parents were classified into one of four groups (indulgent, authoritarian, authoritative, and neglectful). Remarkably, the greatest personal well-being was found for adolescents raised with higher parental warmth and lower parental strictness (i.e., indulgent), and the greatest social well-being was found for adolescents raised with higher parental warmth (i.e., indulgent and authoritative; p < 0.05 for all countries). Consistently, poorer personal well-being and social well-being were associated with less parental warmth (i.e., authoritarian and neglectful). Findings suggest that the parent–child relationships analyzed have a common pattern associated with personal and social well-being that coincide with a proposed third stage.

Parental Involvement as a Protective Factor in School Adjustment among Retained and Promoted Secondary Students

“…School adjustment includes academic factors (such as academic performance); social factors, related to social adjustment (such as school integration) and behavioral adjustment (such as social competence and prosocial behavior); family factors (such as parental involvement in children's school adaptation); and school satisfaction factors [9][10][11].…”

Children’s and Mothers’ Achievement Goal Orientations and Self-Efficacy: Dyadic Contributions to Students’ Well-Being

“…Our results are in addition to those in the international literature that indicate the performance-approach goals as being favourable and not unfavourable. However, this result must be further explored for a more specific cultural differentiation, in a manner in which parental warmth and parental strictness are known to have different consequences for child and adolescent development as a function of the cultural context in which parental socialization takes place [3].…”

“…Nowadays, the definition of sustainability has expanded beyond the ecological, economic, and social environment to include the psychological dimension, focused on the promotion of people's well-being [1]. Previous studies reveal that sustainable development includes important health psychosocial components such as psychological adjustment [2], personal and social well-being [3], motivations against alcohol consumption [4], and even environmental empathy and nature connectedness [5]. As the main socializing environment, the family remains a key factor for optimal development, and the parents the main source of influence for children's and adolescents' well-being [3].…”

“…Previous studies reveal that sustainable development includes important health psychosocial components such as psychological adjustment [2], personal and social well-being [3], motivations against alcohol consumption [4], and even environmental empathy and nature connectedness [5]. As the main socializing environment, the family remains a key factor for optimal development, and the parents the main source of influence for children's and adolescents' well-being [3]. Childhood and adolescence are stages of development with a major impact on the psychological and social adjustment of the future adult.…”

“…Most studies focused on how parenting styles and practices influence children's academic outcomes, such as their academic performance (for reviews, see [57][58][59]), their intrinsic and extrinsic motivation [56,60], and academic self-efficacy ( [61]; for a systematic review, see [62]). Parental styles and practices were shown to significantly influence the academic outcomes of children and adolescents [8,11] and their socio-psychological development [2,3,9,63]. Among several components of parental involvement, the aspirations that parents held for their children's education proved to be an important predictor of school performance [64].…”