Effect of Authoritarian Parenting Style on Psychopathology

Aim: To find the effect of authoritarian parenting style on the development of psychopathology among children and adolescents.
Methodology: Previous literature on this topic was analyzed and comprehended with the help of sites like Google Scholar, PubMed, Science direct, etc., that were also previously used by other research scholars. After collecting the previous literature, a critical analysis was done for those studies and then an overall conclusion was reached.
Literature review: Several studies done by previous researchers were taken into consideration for this current research. These studies were assumed to be the data for the present study and then these were discussed based on their findings and finally the relativity of it with this study was successfully established.
Discussion: Many studies have found that there lies a direct co-relation between authoritarian parenting style and psychopathology. How this type of negative parenting strategy with little space of freedom, liberty, expressiveness and affection makes the child develop a number of psychological, physical as well as social problems. As power-assertive techniques of socialization like that of threats, commands, physical force and love withdrawal are used by authoritarian parents, it restrains their children’s self-expression and independence, therefore this paper also explores how this style deems to be inappropriate from the perspective of a child’s wellbeing, is also discussed here. Not only this but the associated socio-cultural factors that lead parents to adopt such extreme style of child upbringing is also discussed here in details.
Conclusion: It is suggested that parents should not adopt authoritarian parenting style as a sole approach to a child’s upbringing. Parents must always keep the wellbeing of their wards in mind while implementing certain forms of discipline, norms, punishments, or responsibilities upon them. This paper views all these areas in details.