Role of Parenting Styles on Children’s Outcomes

Parents play an important role in the outcome of their children. The styles that they use to
parent impacts their children’s confidence, knowledge and skills, attitudes, social skills, and other
important qualities that have a major effect on their life’s outcomes. This essay examines the
impact of a parent’s socioeconomic status on their parenting styles. It will show that the
parenting style a parent adopts reflects their socioeconomic status which in turn increases
likelihood of their children ending up in the same socioeconomic status as themselves.

A parent’s socioeconomic status has a significant impact on the technique this parent uses
to rear his/her children. Benokraitis (345) defines socioeconomic status (SES) as the rank of a
person’s position in society. This rank is based on their occupation, education, and income. At
the bottom of the rank are low SES. They have few occupational skills and education. Often,
they are either unemployed or work in jobs where they earn minimum wages (Benokraitis 345).
Due to their poverty and often unhappy relationship with their partners, low SES parents are
often depressed. They are, therefore, likely to use very harsh strategies to parent their children or
ignore them altogether. Additionally, due to inadequate financial resources or irresponsible
parents, children brought up in such households may start taking on responsibilities and roles of
adults at a very early age (Benokraitis 346). The overall impact of parenting styles of low SES is
that it results in children who have discipline problems.

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Middle SES families are ranked higher than low SES families. Parents in this category
are often employed in either white- or blue-collar jobs. They may have a college or high school
diploma (Benokraitis 346). Generally, they have more financial resources to enhance the
cognitive, social, and emotional development of their children as compared to low SES parents.
In their interaction with their children, they use sophisticated language that helps the children to
build their vocabulary and improve their self-expression (Benokraitis 346). They also keep books
at home which they regularly read to their children (Benokraitis 346). Such reading helps in the
intellectual development of the children.

High SES parents adopt parenting styles that are most likely to result in very successful
children. Parents in these families are generally highly educated and hold positions of authority
in prestigious fields such as law, business, and medicine (Benokraitis 346). Like middle SES,
high SES parents also invest in the emotional, cognitive, and social development of their
children. In fact, their parenting styles are very much similar. A major difference between them
and middle SES parents is that they have more resources at their disposal to invest in such
development of their children.

It is the dream of every parent to have their children attain high socioeconomic status.
Low SES parents would love their children to attain higher SES ranks while high SES parents
would love their children to maintain their high socioeconomic status. Generally, however,
children do not move significantly beyond their parent’s socioeconomic status (Perazzo et al. 56).
This low socioeconomic mobility may be due to parental techniques adopted by parents in each
socioeconomic status. Middle class parents, for instance, follow the “concerted cultivation”
approach in the parenting of their children (Lareau 97). This approach seeks to help the child
develop their capabilities to their maximum potential. To this end, they make sure that their

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children engage in activities that are specific to their age. They also invest in the development of
the child’s reasoning and language skills (Lareau 97). These activities and investment help the
children to develop key life skills. They also make the child become individualistic and place
high premium on their performance and achievement. The approach employed by middle class
parents is, therefore, likely to lead to the development of high achieving children.

Unlike middle class parents, working class parents pursue an “accomplishment of natural
growth strategy.” This strategy does not involve conscious investment in the development of the
child’s abilities and talents (Lareau 97). Instead, parents in this class view their role as purely
providing food, love, and safety for the child. Children brought up in this manner are often
constrained and not achievement-oriented, unlike their counterparts brought up in middle class
families (Lareau 97). They are, therefore, likely to achieve less in life, thus keeping them from
moving up the socioeconomic ladder.

The type of interaction that parents have with their children has a significant impact on
their wellbeing. Different parents have different ways of interacting with their children based on,
among other things, their socioeconomic status and culture (Bornstein & Bradley 35). For
instance, African American, white, and Asian parents often read books to their children, thus
stimulating their intellectual and cognitive abilities (Benokraitis 344). Relatively well-off parents
also regularly take their children to zoos, playgrounds, and parks (Benokraitis 344). Such
activities not only improve the knowledge of the children, but also allow parents to know them
better.

In conclusion, there is a direct relationship between the way parents bring up their
children and the child’s outcomes. Generally, wealthier parents use parenting techniques that lead

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to better outcomes of their children as compared to those raised by less affluent parents. These
variations in parenting techniques based on socioeconomic classes have been found to play a
major role in general low socioeconomic mobility.

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Works Cited

Benokraitis, Nijole Vaicaitis. Marriages and families: Changes, choices, and constraints. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2014.

Bornstein, Marc., and Robert Bradley. Socioeconomic status, parenting, and child development.
Rutledge, 2014.

Lareau, Annette. Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Univ of California Press,
2011.

Perazzo, Ivone, Gonzalo Sales, and Eliana Sena. “Dynamics of parenting practices and child
development.” Sirie Documentos de Trabajo, 2019.