Most of us have heard of the three main styles of parenting: Authoritarian, Permissive, and Authoritative. If you haven’t, briefly these styles were identified by psychologist Diana Baumrind in the 1970s and have really stood the test of time. Authoritarian is defined by high demanding and low responsiveness, permissive was found to be low demanding but high responsiveness (think about giving in to everything your child wants), and authoritative was the high demanding with high responsiveness. Depending on the cultural context, the best outcomes are often associated with authoritative parenting.

Many struggles that happen in the realm of gentle parenting seem to come from a fear of being permissive. That punishments don’t exist, there’s an allowance of big emotions, etc. A lot of the concern for gentle parents stems from misunderstanding child development, erroneous expectations for child behaviour, and the idea that “boundaries” means we need to be harsher with our children.

This is all bullshit. Nevertheless, it has persisted.

After my recent interview with Dr. Darcia Narvaez, she told me about a paper she unearthed from 1971 in which Dr. Baumrind herself identified a fourth style of parenting that never made the cut – harmoneous parenting. What is this and why does it matter for those of moving away from our mainstream ideas on what constitutes “good” parenting?

What is ‘harmonious parenting’?

Let’s start with what this is. The paper came about because of what Dr. Baumrind calls “oddities” in the way these families were scored on the crucial components that help identify the styles of parenting. Specifically, one of the categories was how much a family “exercised control”. This is that high demandingness part of the coding which really helped differentiated authoritarian/authoritative and permissive parents. While permissive parents almost never exercise control, the other two styles of parenting do.

 

Harmonious parents might look like permissive parents because they didn’t exercise control, but what coders identified was that these families still seemed to “have control”. As Dr. Baumrind says, the parents in the harmonious families neither exercised control nor seemed to avoid it. Their goal wasn’t control, but rather harmony in the family. This means that they were also highly sensitive and responsive, but they didn’t feel the need to control the child.

The key features identified by Dr. Baumrind included:

  • Focus on developing principles for resolving differences
  • Focus on bringing the child up to the parent level (and not reverting to the child level) (i.e., giving the child some control like an adult and not acting childishly in return to the child)
  • They were equitable in their views and styles and thus recognized differences based on knowledge, experience, personality, etc.
  • Did not see differences in power as putting children at a disadvantage
  • Hierarchy of values included: honesty, harmony, justice, and rationality
  • These values were primary over power, achievement, control, and order (though they could acknowledge the practice value of these)
  • They encouraged individuality and independence in their children
  • Focus on the enrichment of the child’s environment
  • Focus on the child learning natural consequences instead of imposed ones

Does this sound familiar??

What outcomes were associated with this parenting style?

There were only 8 families in the sample that they identified as being harmonious and they were skewed towards having girls (6 girls, 2 boys). There seemed to be some sex-effects here as Dr. Baumrind found that the effects for the girls (aged 3 to 5) were quite positive with the girls being independent, friendly, and achievement-oriented on their own, without parents pushing them. The two boys were described as friendly, but “aimless”, “dependent” and “not achievement oriented”. Indeed, they were described as “effeminate” as if that were bad.

Clearly there isn’t much to talk about with respect to the girls, but I do want to address the two boys because in the time since this was written a key piece of information has emerged: Boys neurological development is much slower than girls. Why mention this? Because the boys may simply not be showing these more independent-minded activities because they aren’t neurologically mature enough yet. The fact that the boys were cooperative and friendly is good, but the lack of achievement or independence may simply be a reflection of the young age that these children were at the time of these assessments. I would like to see what happened a few years down the line to be sure of what was going on there. Furthermore, even Dr. Baumrind acknowledges that two cases is hardly enough to make conclusions on when she writes, “if one can say much about two cases” (p 101).

 

What’s the take-home?

I think the key point here is that for many gentle families who feel that they aren’t exerting enough control, the question can be shifted to what are you doing? Are you upset you don’t have control and want more? Or are you aiming to instil harmony and respect in the family unit and thus the idea of power isn’t the final goal?

When our goals are longer-term then the way we approach discipline will differ and it may not look like the type of parenting we’ve been told we should be doing all this time. I think it’s important that families realize that we don’t need to exert control to have control. These are not one and the same and these harmonious families are a wonderful example of that.

 

Relevant Reference

Baumrind, D. (1971). Harmonious parents and their preschool children. Developmental Psychology, 4, 99-102.