During lecture 12’s discussion, we learned about three styles of parenting: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative. Each of these styles are quite different when discussing their implementation and general philosophy. With the authoritarian practice we learned that parents tend to impose firm or strict rules on their children and expect that they obey those rules. With permissive parents, they will not say no to their kids. These types of parents will never impose any rules and most likely would tend to their children’s demands. Lastly, authoritative parents tend to be a mix of the two. Rules are set in place and expected to be followed, however, if a child is able to provide reasoning, they could negotiate and compromise with their parents. These types of parents are flexible and responsive to their kids, but they still have a general structure and set of rules that expect their kids to be obedient to.
When discussing these practices, I was caught reminiscing about my childhood and how I was raised. One thing I remember during my childhood was getting punished a lot. Now I know that sounds bad at first, but I will admit I was quite the troublemaker growing up. Along with that, I also remember that my parents, mostly my mother, had many rules, in which they expected us to follow. I believe that my parents imposed many rules on us because they had three kids (each a year apart) to look after and raise at the same time. Some rules that I remember pertained to curfews and time limits for things and since the three of us either enjoyed playing outside with friends, or play video games and toys, it makes sense that curfews and time limits had to be put in place. For example, my brother and I were forbidden to play Wii at all during the weekday, and we were limited to 1 hour on Saturday and 1 hour on Sunday. We even had a small white timer in front of the television in which as soon as the timer went off, we had to stop playing and do something else. If we didn’t stop playing after an hour, we would get grounded for an hour and sent to our room. For the most part, we obeyed those rules until we reached adolescence and after that it was the end of time limits. Another rule I remember was put in place whenever me or my siblings hung out with friends outside or over their house. If my memory serves me right, I think we had to come home around 8pm. We had the freedom of going anywhere around our neighborhood but as long as we told our parents where we were and we got back home before 8, we had no problems.
In general, our parents never let us stay past 8, play excessively, and respect one another. If we did not follow any of these rules, we usually got grounded for an hour or more, or if we really misbehaved, would get hit with a belt. Typical Hispanic parents would punish their kids by hitting them with belts and such, and I remember, just getting threatened to get hit with the belt was enough to get us to behave.
With that in mind, I would say that my parents used authoritarian practices when raising us. My parents were never lenient and willing to negotiate with the three of us and these authoritative practices really show because during adolescence we became more obedient, even if our parents didn’t threaten us with punishment.