New Directions and Trends in Parenting Research

Book excerpt: For many decades, parenting has been at the center of interest for practitioners and researchers interested in child social and psychological development. The body of research on children’s socialization has primarily focused on traditional parenting styles and their related practices in the spirit of Baumrind’s and others’ conceptualization of parental control and power assertion (e.g. authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive). This research has revealed many domains of children’s and adolescents’ adjustment and wellbeing that are affected by and affecting parenting quality, but intriguing new parental approaches and types have recently emerged in research literature, such as digital parenting, transcendent parenting, parental alienation, overparenting/helicopter parenting, tiger parenting, and several others, about which more is yet to be learned. Likewise, in recent years, our understanding of the role played by factors such as culture/ethnicity, environmental, and familial background in the relationship between parenting styles and children’s psychological wellbeing and mental health has greatly improved. However, the question of whether or not there is a global, uniform optimal parenting remains controversial, as more studies are required to better understand the varying impacts of parenting on the child’s well-being within different demographic and familial contexts. This is especially true for families with special needs children (i.e., children and adolescents with developmental and psychological disabilities), where research on parenting styles, in particular, is understudied. Additionally, in the present digital era, there is growing interested in relatively new behavioral outcomes in children and adolescents, such as sedentary behaviors, including eating and nutrition habits, online behaviors, and digital activity vs. physical activity. These and other important contemporary aspects in children’s functioning and behaviors contribute to developmental mental health, and further establishing our knowledge regarding the parental role in these contexts is essential.