The parenting or child rearing involves the special responsibilities that parents bear with their children. It entails providing love, security, and caring to your children. A mother is said to be the mother of a family when she is responsible in the raising of her children. The mother plays an important role in her child’s life from conception to adolescence. Parents are the protectors and providers of their children. They are the mentors of their wards and provide them with the love, support, and resources they need to survive in this world.
The parenting or child rearing develops and supports a child’s physical, mental, social, and emotional development from birth to adulthood. Parenting encompasses the most intricate nuances of raising a kid and not just as a biological relation. All parents share the responsibility of parenting, but it is still the right of the parents to determine how they will parent their kids. There are several dimensions to parenting from time to time, which parents need to consider in determining how they will parent their children.
One of the major dimensions of parenting is authoritarian parenting style. An authoritarian parent is the most rigid and inflexible parent that would ban all outside influences, such as friends, schools, teachers, extended family and even the parents’ own siblings. In contrast, a permissive parent permits all kinds of influence such as friends, schools, teachers and family members to influence their kids. So, while a permissive parent allows his/her child to have a small group of friends, an authoritarian parent would never allow the same.
The second major dimension of parenting is socialization. It is the process of building and developing interpersonal relationships through the experiences and mistakes we make in our daily lives. Socialization also encompasses learning about how we can relate with others by being aware of how we act and communicate with other people and about how we learn from the people around us. It also involves building a sense of self and being able to establish appropriate relationships with peers and other adults in order to raise children who feel comfortable with their environment and are not threatened by any strangers.
The third major dimension of parenting is child development. Child development is related to early years of life such as infancy, childhood, and adolescence. The early years of child development encompass physical, mental, emotional, and educational development. Parents should take time to invest in their child’s development through early childhood education, child development classes, and fostering a positive child development curriculum.
The fourth major dimension of parenting is compromise. This is related to the principles of fairness and equity. Fairness means setting limits, protecting kids from harm and rewarding children for good behaviors. Equity means supporting and honoring the needs of other parents and providing opportunities to those kids who have special needs or are handicapped. Finally, there is parental expression which means communicating, giving advice, supporting, and modeling the behaviors of parents. The parents interact with each other in parenting strategies such as communication and compromise in order to create a meaningful and balanced parent-child relationship.
