MY IDEAL PARENT LIFESTYLE
After researching about all the areas of parenthood that can influence your child and family I realized what I will want to do to grow a healthy and well being family. I studied divorced/parental fighting families, family types, how birth order can influence your child, parenting styles and hyper parenting. After interviewing my close friend that had to deal with her parents getting divorced and having to grow up and listen to her parents fight made me want to never make my kids go through such a tragic and horrific time. I want to make sure that my husband and I are very stable in our relationship and are a happy couple before we decide to have kids. Not only does the divorce itself harm your children but the fighting that leads to the divorce harms the children emotionally a lot more. Fighting in front of your kid can be very emotionally damaging, which can lead to depression, anxiety and to have bad social skills with others, because when children are threatened at an emotional level they show increases in negative symptoms such as depression, anxiety, aggression, hostility or the child may become aggressive and difficult in arguments. I will also make sure that if my husband and I fight that we don't do it in front of the kids and if we do we always show our children that we don't hold grudges and we make up. Studies show that if you and your spouse do fight around the kids and the conflict is dealt constructively, kids learn to compromise, show compassion and to use humour and warmth to solve disagreements. This also teaches the child that conflict with someone you love is not the end of the world. Secondly, if my child ever has to go through a devastating tragedy of losing their father I will make sure that there is a father image in the picture that they can look up to and have for the support and life decisions that a father gives. Studies say that a mother that is raising kids fatherless are less emotionally supportive, may become depressed, have fewer rules, engage in more conflict with kids and may result in low self esteem. I will make sure that if this happens to my family that I am still there to support them emotionally and finically, if I am going through depression I will talk to a therapist and not show it around my kids, stay balanced and reasonable with rules and make sure my kids know that things will get better. I am wanting to grow a family of four, just like my family and in that case I will make sure that all of my children at treated equally and that the middle child doesn't feel forgotten and lonely. The oldest child will still relate to Adler's theory when he says that the oldest child is given responsibilities because he will be the child that will take on the role of babysitting and being a good role model for his/her younger siblings. Thirdly, I studied the four different types of parent styles: authoritative, permissive, authoritarian and neglectful. When I am a parent I will want to be an authoritative parent. I believe that an authoritative parent is the most reasonable and helpful parent. An authoritative parent has constructive disciplinary methods, are warm and communicate well, respect childs independence, freedom of expression and give choices. A permissive parent is the childs bestfriend, they spoil their kids, give no consequences, warm and accepting and make few demands. An authoritarian parent has no tolerance or mistakes, no friendship at all, have high expectations, strict, no reasoning, rely on punishments, and highly controlling. A neglectful parent doesn't require mature behaviour, very lenient and have a hard time emotionally connecting. I want to be an authoritative parent because they know exactly how to deal with their kids, have a good bond with the kids and often you hear kids telling their parents that "you ruined my life" but an authoritative parent knows exactly how to deal with situations and give choices instead of just relying on a punishment that they decided on. Lastly, I studied about hyper parenting and how controlling parents can be. Hyper parents that always make decisions for their kids, over involved, over protective and over indulgent. Hyper parents are also called the "helicopter" parent because they hover and swoop down to solve problems. I would never want to be a hyper parent because kids need to learn from their mistakes and make their own decisions from a certain reasoning.