Is poor parenting the primary cause of violent or aggressive behavior of children.

Parenting in itself is a great challenge. Parental love is beyond any measures. Every parent wants to see his child grow up into a world class citizen with all good qualities. But certainly some of the parents unknowingly distort their child’s personality. Many children have to endure abuse, neglect, and other types of bad parenting practices each day. This leads to serious emotional and behavioral problems that affect them throughout their life. Aggression is the most common problem in today’s children. 

Psychologist Diana Baumrind during 1960s, based on her research on pre-school age children proposed three parenting styles- authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. 

Some parents don’t allow their kids to get involved in a problem; challenges and experiences rather enforce rules and command obedience. Such parents are emotionally distant from their children. Rather than teaching how to make better choices, they rather teach child to not make mistakes (invested in making their child feel sorry for their mistakes). They take little consideration of children’s feelings/ opinion. They may use punishment instead of discipline. Children who grow with such parents follow obedience most of the time, but with a price. Children who grow up under such household are at a high risk of developing self-esteem problems, have suppressed emotions which can result in repression of memories. They may become hostile and often focus most of their unconscious and conscious thoughts on aggression towards their parents rather than doing things better in future. Such children often become good liars in an effort to escape punishment from parents. 

On contrast, even the parents who are not  involved, offer little to no supervision, leaves the child unattended, often crying and Hungry, have no expectations or demands for their child’s behavior, may intentionally avoid their child, are often too overwhelmed by their own problems. Such parenting may have effects on child, they often have the fear of becoming dependent on others, and the child may have self-esteem issues and can be emotionally withdrawn. And are often found      misbehaving, they often have repressed anger. 

Dr Manoj Malik
 Principal
 St. Lawrence Public School
Dilshad Garden School.
New Delhi