Parenting styles play a very important role in shaping major aspects of a child’s life. Parenting styles differ, and their approaches come with a wide range of freedom, strictness, and control. Nowadays, psychologists consider four types of parenting styles, namely permissive, authoritative, neglectful, and authoritarian style. A parent might adapt to a combination of two or more, or develop varying intensities. 

Different people will develop different parenting styles. The parenting styles that people will develop most likely will be influenced by their own upbringing, childhood, education, religion, and the society in which they live or are currently residing. 

One such parenting style that has caught the attention of many is the authoritarian parenting style. Defined by its firm approach with little to no consideration of the child’s feelings and opinions, authoritarian parenting is a strict parenting style that does have short-term benefits for the parent, but is almost always partnered with destructive results that affect both the child and the parent in the long run.

What Is Strict Parenting?

Parenting is a hard task, and dealing with a young person who has very little experience in creating a safe environment for themselves might become frustrating sometimes. After all, most parents only want what is best for their kids. However, especially for fathers who live in a society where showing soft emotions are often frowned upon, our desire to steer our children to the right path might manifest in strict parenting.

Accordion to WebMD, strict parenting, or authoritarian parenting, is characterized by a person’s ‘high-demandingness, low responsiveness' parenting style. A person with an authoritarian parenting style might expect a child to become a high-performing, superficially successful person with very little to no input on what the child actually desires to do or to become. Authoritarian parents are known to enforce very strict, and specific rules that have unfair consequences in hopes to control their children and pushing them to follow the strict rules they have set. 

Does Authoritarian/Strict Parenting Have Benefits?

For parents who adapt an authoritarian style of parenting, they may be able to control the performance of their children, especially if they are able to see a potential that should be honed. For example, authoritarian parents might force a child to study an instrument every day, without asking the opinion of the child if they have the desire to spend many hours studying the instrument. For authoritarian style parents, they will more often than not ignore what desires the child has expressed, especially if it goes against their own desires. 

In the long run, an authoritarian parenting style might produce children who have a notably elevated level of personal responsibility, and discipline. However, it can often be to an excessive extent, where the child who had grown up as an adult may think too little of themselves and rely on other people’s opinions more than their own. People who experienced little freedom and respect for individuality from their parents may also reduce to growing up as people who have anger issues. If the child does not allow their parent’s authoritarian style early on, they may also be rebellious and become likely to emulate the same parenting style if they do become parents in the future. 

The Perfect Parenting Style

Strict parenting may become powerful for people who want to discipline their children and ensure that they will have a good future. However, a child may develop resentment towards the parents for the lack of acknowledgment that they experience in their childhood. This may pose some serious issues in their relationship as the child grows up as an adult, and the parent grows older. 

While it may sound easy to control the future of your children since one may assume they know what is best as adults, balance is actually the key. As most psychologists would consider, a healthy balance of strictness and open communication is the best parenting style. As fathers, a good amount of guidance may help our children, but we should also remember that they deserve to express their emotions and opinions, especially while they are growing up. By implementing practical strategies like rule consistency, being a good role model, and encouraging independence, fathers can become good parents without having to become strict.