I got all of the following information from page 388-389 from our textbook under the heading Parenting: What's right and what's wrong. As I read this I couldn't help but notice how black and white they looked at the parenting styles. First off they only list 3 parenting styles; permissive, authoritarian and authoritative. I am not saying that these 3 don't exist, I am just saying there probably are few parents that stick to these guidelines 100%. I think most parents will have a combination of permissiveness and an authoritarian hold on their children. So does that mean that all parents are authoritative? I think if you don't give a child a good amount of freedom that will hinder their abilities because all you are doing is sheltering them and setting them up for a harder future. But at the same time if you don't show authority over your children they may have a lack of respect towards others and may develop a "me first" set of morals.
The problem with this is I don't think there is a right way in terms of guidelines on how to raise a child. Even parents who seem to do everything perfect in terms of parenting may have their child become "corrupt" by what the child has experienced from their peers. Parents have a big influence on a childs life but so do the kids that the kid is hanging out with.
Parenting: What's right and wrong
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I have to agree with the comment above. There is no book out there that can teach a parent how to raise a perfect child, and for it to work. After graduating high school I have seen many of my peers who were very sheltered during that time become currupt in college because it is their first experience realizing what the real world is really like. Being less sheltered by your parents in your younger years but still having them have authority over you, allows you to make your own mistakes, learn for them, and have your parents still there to control to what extent those mistakes can become. This can be a good example of how your environment has an effect on how a child turns out. On the other hand, it does depend on the individual themselves and their genes also. Many children turn out to be much like their parents because of the genes they inherited from them, and the environment their parents surrounded them with growing up.
You make a good point when you say that parents do not use 100% of a particular parenting style, let alone a 50-50 combination. I believe the text book only showed the top 3 styles of parenting and that there are several others, it's just that those 3 are the most common. Reading your entry also made me think about the fact that it is rare if both parents agree on a certain style of parenting. In my experience, most of my parent's arguments were about how to raise my sister and I. The main thing they argued about was how to discipline us (one was permissive, the other authoritarian). This goes to prove your point that there are much more styles of parenting and the text book was pretty gauge in their description.
I agree that most parents probably don't strictly follow one of these 3 parenting styles. I believe that the way in which parents choose to discipline their children depends on how they were brought up as a child, maybe where they live is another factor, as well as the other adults and kids in their environment. Although parents have a large say over what their kids do and how their kids act, the other kids, teachers, and peers in the community do as well. Kids are not always at home with their parents, in fact they are most likely in school with other kids their age for majority of the week days. The people one's kids are hanging out with have a huge influence over the child's behaviors. In all, I do think that the parents have the overall, biggest influence over their kids, however their are many parents that have good parenting skills and raise their children correctly, however their child may still grow up to be more corrupt than they had planned. This is where I think outside influences play a big role.
I agree that there isn't set guidelines or types of parenting that each parent sticks to. It's complicated when there are so many different situations that kids and parents can be put into. I think more often than not parents combine many of the styles of parenting depending upon the situation. I also agree that the kid's peers have a lot to do with how they end up as a person. However, if parents are active in their child's life they should know about their friends. Unless the child keeps them a secret of course. Also if the parents pay enough attention to their child they would notice differences in their behavior due to hanging around with bad influence kids and talk to them about it and work to get them away from that crowd. But in the end yes, parents can never be perfect. No kid will turn out perfect, because everybody has imperfections but parents learn from their mistakes and build on them.
Your analysis is interesting and I believe is quite accurate. There is no perfectly right way to parent. The environment and the genes are very dependent on how the child will turn out. Nurture and Nature are strong discrepancies in determining the outcome. The child might have genes that are so strong that the environment will not do much to change how the child turns out such as people with schizophrenia. In cases like this parenting has not as much sway as what the child has been given.