Do you and your partner have opposite approaches to parenting your children? Do you find that you are harboring resentment towards how your partner treats your children differently from the way you do? Do you sometimes get into arguments about how you are parenting your children with your spouse? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then your parenting styles could be driving a wedge into your partnership.
Differing Parenting Styles are a Real Problem in Our Times
There is so much pressure on parents these days to be able to raise and discipline your children in ways that are not harsh, but also help you to raise the best children you possibly can. It can often be hard to know what the right thing to do is in disciplining your children, and it is worse when your partner and their style of parenting is at odds with how you would like to parent your children.
Parenting Styles and Family of Origin
There is probably no place where partners have a greater clash of cultures than in the parenting styles that their families used with them growing up. One partner may have had parents that were too lax in their parenting style, and then another partner may have had parents that were overly strict. It can be hard to know what’s the best way to raise children when you and your spouse have opposite views or styles that you were raised in your family growing up. This unfortunately can set the stage for conflict because one family system can take precedence over the other as far as whose style dominates in any given situation. Unless you and your partner have taken time to make sure you agree on how to raise your children, this can potentially drive a big wedge in between the two of you.
The Need is to Find a Common Parenting Style
Even if you and your partner don’t agree on parenting styles, you do both need to be able to support each other in disciplining your children. The goal is to be able to agree on for the most part on how you’re going to parent your children, but this can be difficult if you’re already way into raising one or more of your children. The last thing either of you should do is to undercut what the other parent is trying to do with your children, at least not doing that in front of the children. If you have a difference with your partner on how to discipline your kids, then take them aside at some point other than when the children are present and try to resolve the disagreement about child raising. This will help make sure you two present and act as much as a team as possible. And that does a lot towards helping your kids to understand that they cannot “divide and conquer“ the parents by going to one for things that they want, knowing they probably will get them from that parent.
Parenting Styles to Steer Clear Of
While there are different views on parenting styles, the main thing is to find a way to parent your children with your spouse that isn’t too extreme. Either being too lax or too punitive is probably going to cause friction at some point between you and your partner. Hopefully you both have full agreement on how you’re going to parent your kids, but generally finding a balanced approach is probably the best way to minimize the strife between the two of you.
What If You Continue to Struggle with Parenting Style Differences?
I’ve been helping my clients for my entire social work career in finding ways to resolve conflicts between spouses. In addition to that, I have over 15 years experience as a professional educator as well, and can attest to the importance of having a parenting approach that helps your children to grow and mature as best as they are able. I can use my combined experience in relationship matters and in having worked with children so long in a professional setting to help you and your partner to get on the same page with your parenting styles. Feel free to fill out the form at the bottom of the page, or call the number above to arrange for a free 20 minute virtual consult with you and your partner if you live in Maryland or Virginia to get a better idea about whether I can help you with your parenting style differences. You owe it to your entire family to help harmonize you and your spouse's parenting styles.
Visit our page on couples therapy to find out how Scott can help you in resolving parenting style differences.
About the author: Scott Kampschaefer, LCSW is a private practice therapist in Frederick, Maryland. He has an extensive background in working with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder at a clinic for older adults with these disorders in Austin, Texas. He now works with adults and adolescents 14 and up in private practice. His most recent book is titled The 5 Pillars of Addiction Recovery and is available for purchase on Amazon and in paperback on this website.