Parental Educational Styles: transition from classical models of understanding to multidimensional intervention models

Abstract

This article focuses on the bibliographic review of the transition from the classical models of understanding about Parental Educational Styles to the multidimensional ones that compose it and their typologies. Parental Educational Styles represent the way of acting of fathers, mothers or caregivers with respect to their children (boys, girls and adolescents) in everyday situations, decision-making as well as problem solving. The construct has been studied from classical psychodynamic and learning models, where at present the dimensions of understanding such as affect and communication, promotion of autonomy, behavioral control, psychological control, revelation and humor are recognized. In typological terms, the main styles are democratic, permissive, strict and negligent. The challenges of investigating Parental Educational Styles is to be able to incorporate positive development aspects of children and adolescents, such as protective factors, and to be able to develop prosocial behaviors in future interventions.