Parents often disagree when it comes to parenting. For example, if a child wants to eat ice cream after swimming, his mother will stop him sternly: “I just came out of the swimming pool. It’s cold now, so I can’t eat cold food!” The father then smooths things over: “It’s not a big deal to eat one, just eat it slowly.”

The family is the main place where children grow up. The parenting styles of fathers and mothers in the family environment are often different, resulting in various combinations of parenting styles, each with its own characteristics. So, how do parenting styles resonate? How does this resonance of parenting work together to play the happy melody of the family?

What Is Parenting Style

Parenting style refers to the sum of attitudes, emotions, and behavioral patterns displayed by parents when raising their children (Darling & Sternberg, 1993). Researchers (Perris, 1980; Jiang et al., 2010) divide parenting styles into rejection, Three types of emotional warmth, and overprotection.

Rejection refers to parental hostility, harshness, and punitive parenting.

• Common manifestations of rejecting parents are: beating and scolding their children, always being dissatisfied with their children, humiliating, sarcastic, and criticizing their children in front of others. This type of parents often say: “Why are you so stupid!”, “If you don’t do well in the exam again, I will beat you!”
• Rejecting parents lacks positive and effective emotional feedback, which can easily make their children lack self-confidence and have poorer adaptability to the environment (Zhao et al., 2023).

Emotional warmth refers to parents’ emotional acceptance and support of their children.

• Common manifestations of emotionally warm parents are: giving warmth and love to their children, paying attention to their children’s ideas, and praising their children’s appropriate behaviors. This type of parent often says: “No matter what happens, I love you!”, “I’m proud of you!”
• Emotionally warm parents provide more warmth and encouragement, and their children have higher self-evaluation, stronger independence, self-esteem, and self-confidence (Ruiz-Hernández et al., 2019).

Over-protection refers to parents’ excessive interference, strict management, and control of their children.

• Common manifestations of overprotective parents are excessive interference in their children’s behavior, imposing their wishes on their children, demanding unconditional obedience from their children, being too strict with their children, etc. This type of parent often says: “Don’t make trouble, I will make decisions for you!”, “I am doing this for your good!”
• Overprotective parents have a high desire for control and require their children to do exactly what their parents want, which can easily lead to children losing their individuality and lacking autonomy (Gorostiaga et al., 2019).

It is worth noting that parenting style, as a multi-dimensional organic whole, is not limited to a specific type (for example, a mother treats her children gently and encouragingly most of the time and in all situations, but occasionally will use corporal punishment, control, and other parenting methods).

The parenting styles of fathers and mothers will also be combined into different family parenting models (for example, “strict father and loving mother”, “tiger mother and cat dad”), thus presenting a multi-type combination of parenting styles (Barker et al., 2017; Liu Sihan et al., 2023).

Different Combinations of Parenting Styles

Psychology researchers (Liu Sihan et al., 2023) explored the parenting styles and child growth outcomes of Chinese adolescents and found that there are different combinations of parenting styles in families. According to whether the parenting styles of the father and mother are consistent, Can be divided into two major categories:

The father and mother’s parenting styles are consistent

• Alienation and neglect: Parents neither severely punish or strictly control their children, nor provide emotional acceptance and support to their children. It is almost a state of laissez-faire. (Indifferent and indulgent neglect)
• Inattentive type: Parents show slightly more strictness, interference, and acceptance than alienating and neglectful parents. They occasionally lose their temper, punish or control their children, and occasionally care and encourage their children, but overall the discipline of their children is still at a low level. (Discipline on a whim)
• Warm and accepting type: Both father and mother can provide their children with high emotional support and acceptance, but rarely show harsh punishment and excessive control. (Positive and healthy care)
• Warm and controlling type: While parents are close to, care about, and encourage their children, they will interfere with and control their children’s choices, manifesting as excessive worry and even occasionally scolding their children. (Manipulation in the name of love)
• Strictly controlling: Parents often use punishment, criticism, strict restrictions, excessive interference, etc. to treat their children. (Excessive control)

The father and mother’s parenting styles are inconsistent

• Strict father and loving mother: The father is strict, scolds, punishes, discourages, and strictly restricts the child, while the mother accepts and supports the child and occasionally restricts the child.
• Strict mother and loving father: The mother is strict, punitive, excessively interfering, and controlling, while the father comforts, encourages, and occasionally restricts the child.

The Impact of Different Types of Parenting Combinations on Children’s Growth

Among the five types of parents with consistent parenting styles, the parenting effects of warm and accepting parents are the best, while the parenting effects of warm and controlling parents have declined.

Both parents who are warm and tolerant can comfort and encourage their children when they need emotional support, and will not blame or restrict their children for no reason. Children can stay energetic, happy, persevere, and actively cope with difficulties (Zhang et al., 2017). Warm-controlling parents give their children warm attention, but at the same time interfere too much and restrict their children, without giving their children enough trust and room to grow, causing their children to be afraid of making mistakes and panic. (Spada et al., 2012).

However, parenting in a distant, neglectful, careless, and strictly controlled family is not effective. Neglectful, inattentive parents do not truly participate in and fulfill their responsibilities and obligations as parents. They neither restrict their children nor invest in their education. As a result, children have lower symptoms of anxiety and depression but are also less able to make friends and complete school work.

On the contrary, although children from strictly controlling families have high academic input, they also show extremely high levels of anxiety and are prone to maladaptive perfectionism (referring to excessive pursuit of perfection and excessive demands on themselves). If it is too high, you will feel very depressed or anxious once something goes wrong or unsatisfactory, which will affect your normal life and learning), you will be overly focused on mistakes, afraid of action, and eventually fall into maladaptation (Smith et al., 2018).

There is no clear conclusion on the pros and cons of parenting styles for families with inconsistent parenting styles.

On the one hand, when only one parent shows severe punishment and strict control, the child will regard the other parent as a warm haven when encountering difficulties, thereby gaining support and encouragement; but on the other hand, inconsistent attitudes of parents and Rules make it easier for children to waver, and fathers and mothers may also have conflicts and conflicts due to inconsistent parenting styles (Tavassolie et al., 2016).

How to Achieve the Optimal Solution to Educational Resonance

Educational directions and principles must be unified

• First of all, both parents should maintain the same general direction of education. This means that parents need to work together to set family educational goals and clearly define what skills and qualities they expect their children to acquire as they grow up.
• For example, one parent believes that the healthy and happy growth of the child is the most important, and the other parent insists that the development and cultivation of the child’s behavioral habits is more critical. At this time, both parents need to actively communicate and integrate wisdom to form a more comprehensive, effective plan suitable for the child. Create a relatively stable growth environment for children.

The form of education can be more flexible

• Secondly, the form of parenting can be more flexible, that is, parents can differentiate in specific parenting behaviors and give full play to their respective personality and skill advantages. Through mutual cooperation, the effect of “1+1>2” is achieved, thus forming a diverse and comprehensive education team.

Summarize the “optimal solution” from real life

• No matter how perfect a parenting model is in theory, it must eventually adapt to real life. Flexible adjustment at different stages is the best solution for family education.
• For example, when a child faces a problem of high academic pressure, parents can adopt the model of “one parent strictly supervises and the other gently encourages”; when the child shows distress or emotional discomfort, they can switch to “one parent provides emotional comfort and the other parent communicates rationally” “model.

Conclusion

In the stage of growing up, perhaps one parent is a firm drumbeat and the other is a tolerant chord; or perhaps both parents are passionate notes. But no matter what, family education is always a beating symphony!