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Does the permissive parenting style work? Learn more about the practical side of this parenting style and its potential risks and pitfalls.
Is there ever a time when a permissive parenting style makes sense? The answer is a bit complicated. Some studies try to suggest that the permissive parenting style can be helpful to your child’s development.
Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
However, scripture and most statistics point to a higher likelihood of various issues in your child from a permissive parenting style. Here are some of the risks a permissive parenting style creates:
The permissive parenting style involves high levels of sensitivity and warmth with minimal to absent levels of boundaries or limits. In other words, no training up of a child. With a youth mental health crisis upon us, I have noticed more parents carrying the false and damaging assumption that easing up on limits and demandingness leads to a healthier mental health in their children.
Proverbs 15:31 says, “The ear that listens to life-giving reproof will dwell among the wise.”
Proverbs 10:17 says, “Whoever heeds instruction is on the path to life, but he who rejects reproof leads others astray.” The wisdom from Proverbs emphasizes the life-giving role biblical and intentional instruction and guidance can play in a child’s development.
Throughout more than two decades as a family therapist, I have discovered four types of permissive parents:
One common theme for permissive parents is that their main goal is for their children to just “be happy” and to pursue their own deserved happiness. Commercials and cultural messages seem to affirm this worldview even though happiness is subjective and illusive.
Happiness usually comes because of healthy relationships, healthy decision-making, and a healthy perspective. But how can kids learn what is healthy without training, guidance on boundaries or learning the difference from right and wrong? Or without learning how to consider other people’s emotions carefully and attentively. Not to mention how to handle their own emotions beyond their own feeling of happiness.
I love what Proverbs 12:1 says, “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.”
Discipline is truly a loving act from a parent to a child. Proverbs has many other passages that emphasize the importance of discipline, guidance, instruction, and direction.
The following are some examples of great goals to train a child in the way they should go (and go beyond happiness).
As a result, even though high levels of warmth and sensitivity that are found in the permissive parenting style are foundational to attachment and relationships there is a key foundation missing – direction and training.
Your child needs loving biblical guidance, demandingness, and boundaries to mature and grow in their character, resilience, and healthy prosocial behaviors. This is training a child the way they should go, so they will not depart from it.
Scripture and research consistently point to high levels of warmth and sensitivity balanced with high levels of demandingness and boundaries as the most ideal parenting style, which is the authoritative parenting style and the 7 Traits of Effective Parenting.
Interestingly, permissive parenting can be effective in some cases, but mainly after parents have first used a consistent authoritative parenting style (the 7 Traits) throughout their children’s early developmental years. In this case, children have learned through guidance and within boundaries and limits how to reach for the better thoughts and make healthy decisions so they can be trusted and given freedoms as they get older.
Children in this scenario are providing the necessary boundaries themselves rather than adults or others needing to put the boundaries on them and are displaying evidence of training within their character.
Go here to learn more about the permissive parenting style and the other three parenting styles. There you can also learn more about the 7 Traits of Effective Parenting, which are based off the extensive research on secure attachment and the authoritative parenting style.
Vice President, Parenting and Youth
Dr. Huerta oversees Focus’ initiatives that equip mothers and fathers with biblical and research based principles and guidance for raising healthy, resilient children rooted in a thriving faith in Christ.
Dr. Huerta is a bilingual psychologist, licensed clinical social worker, author of 7 Traits of Effective Parenting, and co-author of Focus on the Family’s Age and Stage resource, and various other resources. He is also the co-host and expert on the Focus on Parenting and the Practice Makes Parent podcasts.
For many years, he has provided families with practical, biblically-based, and research-based parenting advice on key parenting topics. He has been interviewed by various media outlets including Fox News, Fatherly, Christianity Today, WORLD Magazine, The Christian Post and CBN, and regularly speaks on Christian radio stations and podcasts across the United States. He’s also written for various publications and is a regular speaker at retreats, conventions, family camps, online events worldwide, and on various social media channels.
Dr. Huerta has maintained a private practice serving families in Colorado Springs since 2003 and has also served families as an employee of Focus on the Family since 2004.
He and his wife, Heather, love the outdoors, have been married since 1997, and love spending time with their two adult children.
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