Authoritarian Parenting: Definition, Examples, & Effects​

About fifty years ago, psychologist Diana Baumrind conducted some groundbreaking and painstaking research into how people parent, ultimately coming up with three different parenting styles that she saw consistently appearing across her samples of parents (Baumrind, 1971). Those three styles were permissive, authoritative, and authoritarian parenting. Permissive parents were generally warm toward their children but provided little structure for their children’s lives; instead of enforcing rules and limits, they let their children make nearly all their own choices. Authoritative parents enforced more rules and expectations but were also flexible and warm with their children as they did so. Finally, authoritarian parents were rigid, strict, and harsh, expecting quick and consistent obedience from their children and offering them little autonomy.
 
From the start, this line of research suggested that authoritative parenting—combining the provision of warmth and structure—was most advantageous, at least for children in the White, American samples Baumrind (1971) studied. By contrast, children with authoritarian parents seemed to do less well in their interpersonal relationships, school activities, and overall well-being.
 
Why might this be? First of all, authoritarian parenting is all about following rules, even if the rules themselves don’t make sense or don’t seem to benefit the children (Baumrind, 1971). For this reason, authoritarian parents seem more likely to use punishment than parents with other parenting styles. Where authoritative parents are as likely to use warmth and collaboration as to strictly enforce rules, authoritarian parents push for absolute conformity to their rules—minimal negotiation is allowed or tolerated.
 
This reminds me of my teammate Tom and his father, of course. The few protests Tom made against his father’s expectations fell on deaf ears or even earned him more criticism (“You can make demands like that when you stop striking out all the time!”). It seemed as though father and son lived in a world where only athletic success was acceptable, while anything less was a violation of the rules and a cause for anger and scorn. Although I often wished my own father would show more passion for the game and investment in my performance, I certainly was glad it did not resemble the parenting Tom had to experience.

Over time, people have come to recognize that the two dimensions of parenting—warmth and control—that Baumrind (1971) identified could also be combined into a fourth kind of parenting: the neglectful style. While this might sound like the opposite of authoritarian parenting, permissive parenting is actually the opposite of authoritarian parenting.
 
What does permissive parenting look like? These parents are very kind to their children—they are high on the warmth dimension of parenting—but they are uninvolved otherwise in their children’s lives. Instead of trying to control their children’s behaviors, these parents leave their children to regulate themselves and establish their own self-discipline.
 
When I think back on my own childhood, I recognize that my parents tended in the permissive direction. Although they once in a while got firm and laid down the law, most of the time they were warm but hands-off. This worked well enough for me, as their first-born child, because I was naturally very eager to please and gifted with some innate self-regulation abilities. But some of my younger siblings might have needed more support and accountability than they received; my parents were more likely to be there for them after they had made a mistake than to stop them from making the mistake in the first place.
 
Since Baumrind’s original research, many scholars have considered whether there might be yet more parenting styles, and a lot of research has considered how these parenting styles are related to outcomes for children. For more details on parenting styles in general, including authoritarian parenting, you might watch this video:

Psychological research on the benefits and costs of authoritarian parenting has mostly revealed negative effects for children. For example, children parented this way have, on average, more behavioral issues, fewer social skills, and poorer academic outcomes compared to children whose parents used an authoritative parenting style (Baumrind et al., 2010; Mulvaney & Morrissey, 2012). These kinds of findings are quite consistent and common, at least with European American samples. In other words, for the people most frequently studied in the realm of psychology (European American people living in America), the results are clear: Authoritarian parenting is generally not in the best interest of one’s children.

The picture is more complex for other populations, however. Where authoritarian parenting among White samples is understood as being dominantly strict and aggressive toward one’s children, this level of control may be more adaptive for children of other races and backgrounds. For example, a high level of parental control is often understood differently among Asian American families and may be associated with better outcomes for the children in those families (Ang & Goh, 2006). In fact, plenty of research suggests that there are aspects of authoritarian parenting that are positive for both Asian American and African American families. Even more interestingly, a more authoritative style, which is usually associated with better outcomes for European American children, seems less beneficial to Asian American children than the stricter authoritarian style (Chao, 2001).
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Why might this be? Unsurprisingly, children of different ethnicities and races are being raised in different cultural and economic realities. For example, African American children may be protected from the negative effects of exposure to community violence by parents who are authoritarian (Valentino et al., 2012). In this specific environment, stronger parental control may be more adaptive and helpful.

People who engage in authoritarian parenting seem to have firm and rigid beliefs about the need to control their children’s behavior and to be seen as authority figures (Baumrind, 1971). To them, having their children obey and do the “right” thing is perhaps the most important part of raising children well. Perhaps for this reason, they seem to be more threatened by instances of children being disobedient, are more likely to perceive children as being deliberately disobedient, and report expecting to feel very negatively in situations where children are unruly (Crouch et al., 2017).

There is some evidence that parents who engage in authoritarian parenting may also just be more predisposed to being angry in general (Pidgeon & Sanders, 2009), which could lead them to react more strongly to children’s negative behaviors.​

Yet another line of research suggests that parents may try to control their children when they feel they are of low social status or when they lack resources. One study, looking at decades of data on American families, found that parents that were more economically disadvantaged, as well as families that perceived themselves as having lower social status, were more likely to engage in authoritarian parenting (Schneider & Schenck-Fontane, 2022). These parents may lack the time and resources that make it easier to invest in their children with gentleness and care; it may simply be easier to parent harshly and with great control if one is already very stressed out by the world.

• Ang, R. P., & Goh, D. H. (2006). Authoritarian parenting style in Asian societies: A cluster-analytic investigation. Contemporary Family Therapy, 28, 131–151.
• Baumrind, D. (1971). Current patterns of parental authority. Developmental Psychology Monograph, 4, 1–103.
• Baumrind, D. (1991). The influence of parenting style on adolescent competence and substance use. Journal of Early Adolescence, 11(1), 56–95.
• Baumrind, D., Larzelere, R. E., & Owens, E. B. (2010). Effects of preschool parents’ power assertive patterns and practices on adolescent development. Parenting: Science and Practice, 10(3), 157–201.
• Chao, R. K. (2001). Extending research on the consequences of parenting style for Chinese Americans and European Americans. Child Development, 72(6), 1832–1843.
• Crouch, J. L., Irwin, L. M., Milner, J. S., Skowronski, J. J., Rutledge, E., & Davila, A. L. (2017). Do hostile attributions and negative affect explain the association between authoritarian beliefs and harsh parenting? Child Abuse & Neglect, 67, 13–21.
• Georgiou, S. N., Fousiani, K., Michaelides, M., & Stavrinides, P. (2013). Cultural value orientation and authoritarian parenting as parameters of bullying and victimization at school. International Journal of Psychology, 48(1), 69–78.
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• King, K. A., Vidourek, R. A., & Merianos, A. L. (2016). Authoritarian parenting and youth depression: Results from a national study. Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, 44(2), 130–139.
• Mulvaney, M. K., & Morrissey, R. A. (2012). Parenting beliefs and academic achievement across African-American and Caucasian family contexts. Early Child Development and Care, 182(9), 1105–1124.
• Pidgeon, A. M., & Sanders, M. R. (2009). Attributions, parental anger and risk of maltreatment. International Journal of Child Health and Human Development, 2, 57–69.
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• Schneider, W., & Schenck-Fontaine, A. (2022). Growing up unequal: Objective and subjective economic disparities and authoritarian parenting. Child Abuse & Neglect, 130, 105332.
• Shaw, Z. A., & Starr, L. R. (2019). Intergenerational transmission of emotion dysregulation: The role of authoritarian parenting style and family chronic stress. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 28, 3508–3518.
• Thompson, A., Hollis, C., & Richards, D. (2003). Authoritarian parenting attitudes as a risk for conduct problems: Results from a British national cohort study. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 12, 84–91.
• Timpano, K. R., Keough, M. E., Mahaffey, B., Schmidt, N. B., & Abramowitz, J. (2010). Parenting and obsessive compulsive symptoms: Implications of authoritarian parenting. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 24(3), 151–164.
• Trifan, T. A., Stattin, H., & Tilton‐Weaver, L. (2014). Have authoritarian parenting practices and roles changed in the last 50 years? Journal of Marriage and Family, 76(4), 744–761.
• Valentino, K., Nuttall, A. K., Comas, M., Borkowski, J. G., & Akai, C. E. (2012). Intergenerational continuity of child abuse among adolescent mothers: Authoritarian parenting, community violence, and race. Child Maltreatment, 17(2), 172–181.