Stick to good cop, bad cop formula

Sanjay Arora

Q. During a recent parent-teacher meeting our son’s school conducted a personality check on me and my wife. My parenting style was declared to be authoritative while my wife’s style as permissive. I am worried if it will have any influence on self esteem of our 11-year-old child.

A. Self-esteem is a person’s sense of self and self-evaluation. In other words, it describes how much you appreciate and like yourself. Self-esteem is often seen as a personality trait, which results it into being stable and enduring. Self-esteem consists of a number of beliefs about yourself, such as the how you evaluate your own appearance, emotions and behaviour.

Self-esteem plays a significant role in the and success throughout your life. A low self-esteem may hold you back from succeeding at school or work because you don’t believe yourself to be capable enough. On the other hand, having a healthy self-esteem can help you achieve a lot more because you navigate life with an assertive attitude. 

One of the most interesting things about being a parent is that there is a huge variety as to how we raise our children. At the same time, there are many common factors from one parent to another. Researchers in last century grouped parents into four common parenting styles — authoritarian or disciplinarian, permissive or indulgent, uninvolved and authoritative. Each of the four parenting style varies in the areas of discipline style, communication, nurturance, and expectations.

For a healthy family life it was earlier considered earlier that parents should develop and practice consistent intra as well as inter-parenting. In India, fathers generally are less available as compared to mothers and father-child relationship could be marked by compliance while most of the time of mothers is spent taking care of their children. 

However, surprisingly, a lot of evidence exists that there does not exist any significant difference between the permissive parenting style and authoritative parenting style of both fathers and mothers in terms of their effect upon the self-esteem of adolescents. There is no significant difference between the effect of inter-parental consistency on the sense of self-worth among the adolescents. 

As a result, what seems as the only option is the ‘middle-path’ which reminds of a ‘good cop and bad cop formula’, that may prove to be more efficient from time to time in parenting. And that is what luckily exists in your case anyways. 

Be yourself! Happy parenting!

— The expert is a Panchkula-based employability expert and Chief Mentor, Maven Career Coaching