Parenting Styles: Finding the Right Approach for Your Family Following Divorce

In this article, we’re talking parenting styles and finding the right approach for your family following your divorce.

When going through a divorce as a parent, you may feel the need to use family solicitors to cement child arrangements, but this doesn’t always include details of separated parenting styles.

Children will naturally try to test boundaries (and, at times, your patience) and, following a divorce, may try to pit one parent against the other, leading to increased tension. In this article, we’re talking about parenting styles and how to find the right approach for your family following divorce.

What Types Are Parenting Styles Are There?

This term refers to the way in which you interact with your child in terms of rules and discipline. Some common parenting styles are as follows:

Authoritarian Parenting

This is the term used when a parent is overly strict and unyielding and imposes a lot of rules and regulations on a child’s life. While the parent may feel that discipline is the most effective way of raising a child, this style can often appear unreasonable – particularly as children get older and begin to compare their lives with those of their peers.

Authoritative Parenting

With this parenting style, there is a focus on nurturing and support – but with clearly set out rules and boundaries. The authoritative parent will encourage children to have input when it comes to making decisions while setting reasonably strict boundaries.

When it comes to discipline, the authoritative parent will tend to use punishment as a learning tool with a view to teaching the child about their mistakes rather than simply punishing them without any lessons learned.

Permissive Parenting

The permissive parent will often appear to want their child to be their friend and will therefore impose few rules regarding their behaviour. Similarly, the permissive parent will rarely address or punish bad behaviour, leading the child to further test boundaries within the relationship.

Another example of a permissive parent would be one who does not impose chores on their child such as laying the table or tidying their bedroom.

Uninvolved parenting

As the name would suggest, the uninvolved parent has little interaction with their children and will, in many cases, simply leave parenting duties up to their partner. This can be the case when a parent works long hours or is away from home for extended periods of time.

Finding Your Parenting Style

There’s a good chance that you are already able to identify your parenting style from the above – but here’s where it gets tricky. Within a relationship, two spouses often have different parenting styles and, while this may have worked while you were together, it’s far from ideal once you divorce.

If, for example, once you’re living in separate homes, you employ an authoritative style while your former partner is the permissive one, you will find yourself in a ‘good cop, bad cop’ situation which can be confusing to your child.

For most people, the ideal parenting style would fall somewhere in between the authoritative and permissive styles to ensure that your child feels nurtured and supported while learning values through rules, guidelines and responsibilities.

Following your divorce, it’s a good idea, if possible, to agree on a parenting style with your former spouse. While things will, of course, work slightly differently in each household, you can help to keep things consistent for your child’s sake. This can involve agreeing on a number of aspects of parenting including:

• Weekend and weekday bedtimes
• Number of hours of screen time
• Household chores to be completed
• Use of language
• Discipline and punishment

When one parent does not live with the child and, therefore, sees them less frequently, it can be tempting to over-compensate by spoiling the child and becoming overly permissive. If this contrasts widely with the way things are done at home, it can be extremely confusing for the child and can lead to attempts at manipulation and emotional blackmail.

If, however, the same boundaries are in place in both homes, the child will more easily understand what is expected of him and her and will usually behave accordingly.

There will come a time when you or your spouse will find a new partner and so it’s important that you are agreed on maintaining the same parenting style even if a new partner or spouse is on the scene.

Finding the right parenting approach…

Nobody wants to put their child through a divorce but, with the best will in the world, this is not always avoidable. The important thing for your child is that things remain the same as much as possible even though his or her parents are now living apart.

This means showing a united front as far as your children are concerned – and never trying to score points with the kids by trying to become ‘the cool parent’ who lets them do what they want, when they want.

By agreeing on the parenting basics you can ensure consistency for your kids going forward and, in time, you’ll manage to create your own parenting style which works for everybody concerned.