Effects of parenting styles on young children’s social skills

Abstract

The family is the basic environment in which young children live and is the main vehicle for their socialization. Parenting styles, as the consistent style of parenting demonstrated by parents in the family, impact the child’s mental health and social skills development to some extent. Social skills are important skills that young children acquire and use appropriately through positive interactions with adults and peers and are widely used in their social interactions and adaptation to social life. This paper categorizes parenting styles, generalizes the social skills of young children, and examines the effects of parenting styles on young children’s social skills from both positive and negative perspectives. As a representative of positive parenting styles, the democratic parenting style was positively associated with and positively predicted the development of social skills; coddling, permissive, authoritarian, and inconsistent parenting styles were negatively associated with and negatively predicted the development of social skills. This paper proposes recommendations to promote the development of social skills in young children, such as popular science lectures in schools and parent meetings, parents improving their parenting knowledge, and fathers increasing their involvement in parenting, hoping to help parents learn more about scientific parenting and apply it in practice, and to provide research directions for future studies.