Parents do not always have the same parenting style or do not exhibit the same parenting behavior all the time. It is possible one parent may favor one style over the others, while the other parent favors a different style that may clash with his or her spouse.

According to an MSNBC interview with experts, men and women differ in parenting styles because of the differences in their responses towards their children’s behavior. Stereotypically, women likely show an authoritative parenting style, while men polarize towards two opposing directions: permissiveness and authoritarian.

In a family wherein both parents work, responsibilities in caring for the child falls heavily on the mother although the women expect the fathers to do their share in the feeding, clothing and bathing of children. When it comes to discipline and decision making, both genders show different responses towards their children.

Men generally feel that children should be left on their own when playing and exploring the world around them, but are actively involved in making decisions for and disciplining their children. Women naturally fret and worry. They show intense protectiveness and care for their children, and yet, are often lenient when it comes to disciplining. They often vacillate between permissiveness and authoritative parenting.

These differences in parenting behavior often lead to disagreements in parenting decisions. Parental conflict over the children’s welfare produces unnecessary stress between spouses and with the children. To resolve this conflict, both parents should practice the following general parenting tips:

1. Parents have to stay tuned into each other and have open communication.
2. Parenting conflict stresses the kids.
3. Parental conflict stresses your marriage.
4. Children learn to manipulate parents. If parents do not side together, then the kids will definitely figure out how to play one parent over the next. It is the classic, “Daddy said I could do this,” line.

Originally, there were three prototypes of parenting styles as described by Diana Baumrind in 1966. She described each parenting style – Authoritative, Authoritarian and Permissive – in her most cited paper, Child care practices anteceding three patterns of preschool behavior, which was published in 1967.

According to the site DevPsy.org, each parenting style produced certain common qualities in children exposed to the same dominant parental behavior. The following lists those qualities under each parenting style:

Authoritative Parenting

• lively and happy disposition
• self-confident about ability to master tasks.
• well developed emotion regulation
• developed social skills
• less rigid about gender-typed traits (exp: sensitivity in boys and independence in girls)

Authoritarian Parenting

• anxious, withdrawn, and unhappy disposition
• poor reactions to frustration (girls are particularly likely to give up and boys become especially hostile)
• do well in school (studies may show authoritative parenting is comparable)
• not likely to engage in antisocial activities (exp: drug and alcohol abuse, vandalism, gangs)

Permissive Parenting

• poor emotion regulation (under regulated)
• rebellious and defiant when desires are challenged.
• low persistence to challenging tasks
• antisocial behaviors

As always, the developmental psychologists believed in the effectiveness of the Authoritative parenting style over the other two in bringing up healthy and happy adolescents.

Do you wonder what your parenting style is? Is it a healthy mix of Authoritarian and Permissive? Is it Active Parenting? Find out by taking this short quiz at ActiveParenting.com.

Knowing and understanding your parenting style can help you become a better parent to your children. It will also help you understand your teen’s behavior, and what steps you can take to change it for a positive outcome.

Note: The quiz may not be as accurate as you might expect. The results are actually an approximate of what your dominant parenting style might be. All parents use a mix of one or two parenting styles, depending on the situation.

Although most research done by developmental experts points to authoritative or active parenting as the best parenting style that produce the most positive outcomes in adolescent development, there are still many factors that contribute to these outcomes.

Parenting behavior should be consistent; however, not everyone can be patient and understanding all the time. Parenting behavior may be influenced by mood, lack of sleep, stress and illness. However, one parenting style typically dominates parenting behavior.

On one hand, parenting behavior may be influenced by adolescent characteristics, such as personality and temperament. An uncooperative, immature and irresponsible teen may push some parents to change parenting styles from active or permissive to authoritarian.

Still, many teens who grew up in a loving family with mentally and emotionally healthy siblings turn out to be the family’s “black sheep” or the sole “bad apple” among the lot. Children in the same family exposed to the same parenting style grow up into different individuals with different life paths. In these cases, therapists and counselors do not look into family as the source of the adolescent’s self-destructive behavior.

The three previous articles identified three of the four patterns of parenting styles, which produce mostly negative behavior in your teen. The last pattern is what experts refer to as Active Parenting, which they also refer to as Authoritative Parenting. This pattern is very different from Authoritarian, although it has degrees of Authoritarian and Permissiveness combined.

Active Parenting displays a good mix of parental warmth and control. Active parents show affection and caring as well as firmness and authority in implementing the rules and making decisions. Active parents take the time to listen to their teen and encourage a healthy and meaningful discussion.

Research into family issues and education showed positive results from an Active Parenting style. Teens raised by Active parents learn to respect authority figure and follow rules while maintaining an independent mind and a self-confident view of the world and of others. They learn to negotiate and engage in discussions and to value the opinions of others, which help them become socially competent, responsible and autonomous.

The previous article tackled the four types of permissive parenting, which included Indifferent Permissiveness in parental behavior. This type of permissive parenting mirrors the third pattern of parenting style, which is Uninvolved Parenting.

Similarly, Uninvolved Parenting also involves displays of indifference from parents towards their children. They often say to their kids that they did not care where they went or what they did. They do not even show they care whether their kids did well at school or not, or how well behaved they were when in public. All they seem to care about are their own interests and their selves.

Unlike Indifferent Permissiveness, however, Uninvolved parents do not reward their children anything of value. They literally become uninterested with and neglectful of their children’s safety and welfare. These parents may have become tired, frustrated or simply given up exerting parental authority over their children.

Teens who grew up with Uninvolved parents did not receive parental warmth and control, which leads to problems with self-control and impulsive behaviors. They exhibit the same behavior as those teens with Permissive parents.

Previously, we discussed the first of four patterns of parenting styles, which is Authoritarian parenting. As a recap, we described Authoritarian parents as inflexible disciplinarian who believed children should always obey their parents and that punishment should always follow a violation of the rules. Their motto probably says, “Resistance is futile.”

A complete opposite of Authoritarian parenting is Permissive parenting, which is the second pattern of parenting style. Unlike the first pattern, Permissive Parenting has too much warmth, but less parental control.

Permissive parents demand less from their children. They often give in to their teens’ wishes just to keep the peace in the home. They do not like to say no to their children. As a result, teens raised by Permissive parents learn that there are few boundaries to respect and rules are mere suggestions. This further develops into lack of self-control and ego-centrism, which affects their relationships with other people.

According to this article at Focus Adolescent Services, Permissive Parenting divides further into four types:

1. General Confused Permissiveness

The most common type seen in Permissive parents compels them to give in to whatever their teen wants. They are generally out of touch with their adolescent and feel that pleasing them is the best they can do as parents.

2. Compensatory Permissiveness

Parents who grew up in poverty or had Authoritarian parents often behave this way towards their own children. They want to give to their teens the material goods and freedom they themselves did not receive from their parents.

3. Conditional Permissiveness

This type of Permissive parenting rewards the teens for good behavior that reflects well on the family, such as getting good grades. The conditional behavior should have been taught as part of a child’s responsibility towards his or her family, but instead, the behavior becomes a token for exchange with material rewards.

4. Indifferent Permissiveness

Parents who display indifference towards their teens may be too preoccupied with their own problems, their work or their selves. They give their teens whatever they wanted; in return, they expect their kids to leave them alone and not make demands on their time.

All these types have something in common: the parents often give whatever their teens wanted because they do not want to be bothered with putting in time and effort to raise their kids in the right direction. A large portion of the fault lies with the parents, who fail to take an active participation in the rearing of their children.

Parenting teens can be overwhelming for some parents. Parents often find their children have changed from the sweet little boy or girl they have raised. This time parents need to change their parenting style because the teenage years are very different from the childhood years.

Parenting styles have four patterns based on two aspects of parenting behavior: control and warmth. Parental control refers to the degree to which parents manage their children’s behavior, from being very strict to being lenient with rules and demands. Parental warmth refers to the degree of acceptance or rejection by parents of their children’s behavior. Combinations of these two parental behaviors produce four different styles of parenting.

Traditionally, parents follow their parents’ parenting style, which is the Authoritarian parenting style. These types of parents display little warmth and high controlling behavior. As strict disciplinarians, they use a restrictive style that insists on unquestionable obedience. They revoke protests by saying “because I said so” or “because I’m the parent and you are just the child.”

Teens reared by Authoritarian parents learn to value strict adherence to rules over independent thinking. Their parents do not engage in discussion with them regarding subjects they consider taboo or unimportant. As a result, teens grow up either submissive or rebellious. Those submissive teens develop parental dependence, while those rebellious teens tend to be aggressively defiant.

When Authoritarian parents encounter an aggressively defiant teen, they tend to respond the same way in their effort to establish authority and dominance over their child’s bad behavior. Sadly, the more they force their problem teens to submission, the more defiant their teen becomes.

At this point, the parents realize they have failed in breaking through the barrier between them and their child. This is where professional counselors and family therapists come in to help.

Changes in behavior and attitudes are normal during adolescence, but self-destructive behavior and anti-social personality changes are not. In fact, these are just the outward symptoms of a troubled teenager.

As an active parent, you should be on alert for these extreme signs of a truly trouble teenager:

• Being more secretive, which seems more than a desire for greater privacy
• Regular, sudden outbursts of anger that are clearly unreasonable and out of proportion to whatever has caused the anger
• Regularly misses curfew, does not show up when expected, and lies about his or her whereabouts (after you find out they were not where you expected them to be)
• Sudden changes in “friends” with no effort made to let you meet these new “friends.” Along with a new group is a distinct change in appearance, such as clothing and jewelry, and a sudden shift in attitude (i.e. more sullen, defiant, hostile).
• Stealing money from your purse or wallet on regular occasions, some steal jewelry, phones and other household items that they can pawn for cash.
• Extreme mood swings, for example from depression to elation (clearly manic-depressive) and seems to sleep a lot more than usual (probably clinical depression)
• Grades have suddenly dropped with no rational explanation, and your teen has lost interest in his or her usual activities

The natural changes in behavior that adolescence brings are fleeting, but extreme shifts in behavior that show a consistent pattern over time definitely mark your child as a troubled teen. The worst thing that you could do as a parent is to make excuses for your child and postpone any form of intervention. Do not wait to see your teen acquire a drug habit, develop alcoholism, or land in juvenile prison.

Sending your troubled teenager to military boarding school is not enough. Along with the therapy your defiant teen gets, you as a parent should also actively participate in helping your problem teenager reform. Active parents do not wash their hands off their problem child; they do not leave the guiding and counseling to the counselor or therapist.

An active parent means taking action immediately when you see your child showing behavior that seems extreme even for adolescents. It means you should not wait for your teen to ask for help. You should also avoid making excuses for your teen’s “unruly” behavior.

TroubledTeensInfo.com provides some example of how an active parent behaves towards their teenage children:

• An active parent would not just let a teen’s counselor take care of all the therapy. The parent would speak to the teen’s counselor and keep an open line of communication between them.
• An active parent would not wait for a teenager to ask for help, but offer it.
• An active parent would not just wait for a teenager to ask questions, but the parent may ask a teen about anything he/she may want to know or talk about.
• An active parent says to a teenager – I am here.
• An active parent is not too busy with work to ask a teen how his/her day went after school.
• An active parent asks a question and takes the time to listen attentively to the answer.
• An active parent puts time apart to have fun with a teenager.
• An active parent gets to know a teenager.
• An active parent takes the time to know with whom your teenager hangs out with.
• An active parent monitors the medication of a teenager, noting his/her feelings after the dose, as well as possible side effects observed.

Most important of all, an active parent does not compare their problem teen’s behavior with the behavior of other teens or even their other children. Each child is unique and some develop eccentricities that many people may not understand. Your job as an active parent is to see through these personality differences and see whether your teen is at risk for destructive behaviors, such as suicide, depression and substance abuse.