Authoritarian Parenting: Definition, Examples, & Effects​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
Authoritarian parenting is a strict, harsh, and overbearing style of parenting, known among psychologists for its associations with worse outcomes for children.​
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When I was growing up, I spent more time around other kids’ mothers than I did around their fathers. When I did see fathers in action, it was usually at sporting events, such as baseball games and basketball practices, where my peers and I were intensely focused on demonstrating our athletic skills. And our fathers—well, what the fathers did looked pretty different from one father to another.
I remember one father in particular whose son, a teammate of mine we can call Tom, was a talented athlete but cowered under his father’s authority. Tom’s father would loudly chastise and critique his son; he never hit Tom in front of others, but he would sometimes stalk off to the parking lot, almost dragging his son by the arm. For most of us boys, his energy was scary, and we stayed away. And as Tom grew up, becoming more of a bully but also more isolated, we tended to stay away from him too.

Mothers can be this way too—anybody can be an authoritarian parent. How do parents get this way, and what does it mean for their children? Psychologists know a lot about parenting styles, so let’s look under the hood of the style of parenting known as authoritarian parenting.​
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What Is Authoritarian Parenting? (A Definition)​

About fifty years ago, psychologist Diana Baumrind conducted some groundbreaking and painstaking research into how people parent, ultimately coming up with three different parenting styles that she saw consistently appearing across her samples of parents (Baumrind, 1971). Those three styles were permissive, authoritative, and authoritarian parenting. Permissive parents were generally warm toward their children but provided little structure for their children’s lives; instead of enforcing rules and limits, they let their children make nearly all their own choices. Authoritative parents enforced more rules and expectations but were also flexible and warm with their children as they did so. Finally, authoritarian parents were rigid, strict, and harsh, expecting quick and consistent obedience from their children and offering them little autonomy.
 
From the start, this line of research suggested that authoritative parenting—combining the provision of warmth and structure—was most advantageous, at least for children in the White, American samples Baumrind (1971) studied. By contrast, children with authoritarian parents seemed to do less well in their interpersonal relationships, school activities, and overall well-being.
 
Why might this be? First of all, authoritarian parenting is all about following rules, even if the rules themselves don’t make sense or don’t seem to benefit the children (Baumrind, 1971). For this reason, authoritarian parents seem more likely to use punishment than parents with other parenting styles. Where authoritative parents are as likely to use warmth and collaboration as to strictly enforce rules, authoritarian parents push for absolute conformity to their rules—minimal negotiation is allowed or tolerated.
 
This reminds me of my teammate Tom and his father, of course. The few protests Tom made against his father’s expectations fell on deaf ears or even earned him more criticism (“You can make demands like that when you stop striking out all the time!”). It seemed as though father and son lived in a world where only athletic success was acceptable, while anything less was a violation of the rules and a cause for anger and scorn. Although I often wished my own father would show more passion for the game and investment in my performance, I certainly was glad it did not resemble the parenting Tom had to experience.

Opposite of Authoritarian Parenting​

Over time, people have come to recognize that the two dimensions of parenting—warmth and control—that Baumrind (1971) identified could also be combined into a fourth kind of parenting: the neglectful style. While this might sound like the opposite of authoritarian parenting, permissive parenting is actually the opposite of authoritarian parenting.
 
What does permissive parenting look like? These parents are very kind to their children—they are high on the warmth dimension of parenting—but they are uninvolved otherwise in their children’s lives. Instead of trying to control their children’s behaviors, these parents leave their children to regulate themselves and establish their own self-discipline.
 
When I think back on my own childhood, I recognize that my parents tended in the permissive direction. Although they once in a while got firm and laid down the law, most of the time they were warm but hands-off. This worked well enough for me, as their first-born child, because I was naturally very eager to please and gifted with some innate self-regulation abilities. But some of my younger siblings might have needed more support and accountability than they received; my parents were more likely to be there for them after they had made a mistake than to stop them from making the mistake in the first place.
 
Since Baumrind’s original research, many scholars have considered whether there might be yet more parenting styles, and a lot of research has considered how these parenting styles are related to outcomes for children. For more details on parenting styles in general, including authoritarian parenting, you might watch this video:

Video: 5 Parenting Styles and Their Effects on Life

Authoritarian Parenting Pros & Cons

Psychological research on the benefits and costs of authoritarian parenting has mostly revealed negative effects for children. For example, children parented this way have, on average, more behavioral issues, fewer social skills, and poorer academic outcomes compared to children whose parents used an authoritative parenting style (Baumrind et al., 2010; Mulvaney & Morrissey, 2012). These kinds of findings are quite consistent and common, at least with European American samples. In other words, for the people most frequently studied in the realm of psychology (European American people living in America), the results are clear: Authoritarian parenting is generally not in the best interest of one’s children.

The picture is more complex for other populations, however. Where authoritarian parenting among White samples is understood as being dominantly strict and aggressive toward one’s children, this level of control may be more adaptive for children of other races and backgrounds. For example, a high level of parental control is often understood differently among Asian American families and may be associated with better outcomes for the children in those families (Ang & Goh, 2006). In fact, plenty of research suggests that there are aspects of authoritarian parenting that are positive for both Asian American and African American families. Even more interestingly, a more authoritative style, which is usually associated with better outcomes for European American children, seems less beneficial to Asian American children than the stricter authoritarian style (Chao, 2001).
​
Why might this be? Unsurprisingly, children of different ethnicities and races are being raised in different cultural and economic realities. For example, African American children may be protected from the negative effects of exposure to community violence by parents who are authoritarian (Valentino et al., 2012). In this specific environment, stronger parental control may be more adaptive and helpful.

Causes of Authoritarian Parenting

People who engage in authoritarian parenting seem to have firm and rigid beliefs about the need to control their children’s behavior and to be seen as authority figures (Baumrind, 1971). To them, having their children obey and do the “right” thing is perhaps the most important part of raising children well. Perhaps for this reason, they seem to be more threatened by instances of children being disobedient, are more likely to perceive children as being deliberately disobedient, and report expecting to feel very negatively in situations where children are unruly (Crouch et al., 2017).

There is some evidence that parents who engage in authoritarian parenting may also just be more predisposed to being angry in general (Pidgeon & Sanders, 2009), which could lead them to react more strongly to children’s negative behaviors.​

Yet another line of research suggests that parents may try to control their children when they feel they are of low social status or when they lack resources. One study, looking at decades of data on American families, found that parents that were more economically disadvantaged, as well as families that perceived themselves as having lower social status, were more likely to engage in authoritarian parenting (Schneider & Schenck-Fontane, 2022). These parents may lack the time and resources that make it easier to invest in their children with gentleness and care; it may simply be easier to parent harshly and with great control if one is already very stressed out by the world.

Examples of Authoritarian Parenting​

Authoritarian parents are more likely to use physical punishment and to closely supervise their children (Hoeve et al., 2008). This could take the form, for example, of watching a child complete a simple chore, offering more than enough feedback, and stepping in to roughly show the child how to complete the task more effectively. Often, punishment delivered by authoritarian parents seems arbitrary, out of proportion to the situation, or unrelated to actually showing the child how to engage in more desirable behaviors (Baumrind et al., 2010).
 
Along these lines, authoritarian parents also use high rates of coercive parenting strategies (Baumrind et al., 2010). They use more verbal aggression with their children and more psychological control tactics, such as inducing guilt in their children so the children will obey, or threatening to withhold their love if the child is not more compliant.
 
At the same time, some authoritarian parenting can include potentially positive forms of intense control, such as when a parent keeps a child on task to complete an important school project the night before it is due. However, this kind of intense support might also be accompanied by negative statements or expressions of emotion that make the child feel bad about the situation.

Authoritarian Parenting Effects on Mental Health

In addition to hurting children’s academic performance, authoritarian parenting, at least among White families, is associated with negative mental health consequences. These children have higher rates of depressive symptoms (King et al., 2016), experience more bullying perpetration  and victimization at school (Georgiou et al., 2013), and seem more likely to develop anxiety symptoms (Timpano et al., 2010).
 
I think these findings make a lot of sense. Children who continually receive the message that they cannot do things right on their own, and who are coerced or forced into accepting help and being controlled, will have a hard time seeing themselves as good and competent people.

Authoritarian Parenting Effects on Children

As should be clear by now, authoritarian parenting seems to result in negative outcomes for many children across a wide range of life domains, from academic performance to social interactions to mental health (Baumrind, 1991; Russell et al., 2003). These results seem to be consistent across social classes and countries, at least for people of European descent (Thompson et al., 2003).

Authoritarian Parenting Research

It also seems that authoritarian parenting may be reproduced across generations. Chronically stressed out families may feature more distressed parents, whose authoritarian responses to that stress create distressed children, who in turn end up being authoritarian parents themselves (Shaw & Starr, 2019). Although these patterns may be changing over time—it looks like in many countries, rates of authoritarian parenting are decreasing (Trifan et al., 2014)—it is likely that families locked in this pattern may continue to function this way. If you have ever wondered why people end up parenting as harshly as their parents did despite their intentions not to do so, it may be because of this: Being maltreated as a child by strict and harsh parents seems to make it harder to regulate yourself while parenting as an adult (Rodriguez, 2010).

Articles Related to Authoritarian Parenting

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Authoritarian Parenting

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Authoritarian Parenting​

I think it is pretty encouraging news that authoritarian parenting practices, especially physical punishment, are decreasing with time (Trifan et al., 2014). At least in Western cultures, which place a high premium on developing a sense of independence and learning to regulate oneself without outside support, authoritarian parenting seems to undermine the very skills needed to survive and thrive.
 
If you find yourself engaging in authoritarian parenting, it is probably for some reasons that you can change, or at least investigate. Learning about more adaptive and effective parenting styles may give you a greater sense of competence—and more satisfaction—as a parent.

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