Parenting: Cultural Influences and Impact on Childhood Health and Well-being

This book presents abundant emergent research works of American, European and Latin American countries, and examine the results of the research, which include serious questioning of the most popular ideas about the theory of parenting styles proposed by Diana Baumrind. Following traditional parenting research approaches that examine how parents treat their children and how these children fit into society, the fourteen chapters of this book explore the various countries of North and South America (United States, Brazil and Peru) and Europe (Sweden, United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic), and sampled people from various backgrounds (for example, adolescents at psychosocial risks, and elderly people), for determining who has the best parenting style. The authors'consider different measures of parental behavior for different parenting styles (authoritative, indulgent, authoritarian, or neglectful) and a varied set of criteria to determine how their children adjust. Childhood health and well-being outcomes were as varied as academic achievement, self-esteem, drug use, internalization of values, forgiveness, adolescents'scholar adjustment, child-to-parent violence and teen dating violence. The contributors of this book conclude that indulgent parenting styles are equal or even better than authoritative parenting styles, and highlight the importance of considering cultural influences when the relationships between parenting and its impact on the well-being of children are analyzed.