“Tough Love”: Our character is laid before the age of five according to new study

November 8, 2009 by Baby Chums
Filed under: News

A new study suggests, “Tough love” parenting enables children to better deal with life and lays a foundation for your child’s character before the age of five.

Disengaged or authoritarian parents are reported to be less likely to raise life-skilled children, whom through a combination of warmth and discipline are likely to develop skills such as self-application, regulation and empathy. Character, the report suggests is not a soft skill, but integral to our adult success and shaped before the age of five.

The Building Character report, by Demos, the left-leaning think tank, crunched data from more than 9,000 households in the UK from the Millennium Cohort Study.

Family structure and income also affected children’s development. Children from wealthy backgrounds were more than twice as likely to develop crucial characteristics than poor families. However this disappeared when parenting style was factored in.

The gap between children from married and single parent families also disappeared when the quality of parenting was taken into consideration.

The report said: ‘the most important influence is the quality of parenting.

‘Confident, skilful parents adopting a ‘tough love’ approach to parenting, balancing warmth with discipline, seem to be most effective in terms of generating these key character capabilities.’

Charity, “Parentline Plus” chief executive Jeremy Todd said: “If we are to reduce the stranglehold of cycles of deprivation, the issue of how we support families to raise children must be grasped,”

‘We welcome this report and hope that it stimulates debate among policy makers around how best to support families to transform our society into one where we top the league tables for outcomes for children and well-being.

“Parents on a low income, but who are confident and able, are as effective at generating character capabilities in their children as parents on a high income.”

Jen Lexmond, co-author of the Demos report, said: “Parents on a low income, but who are confident and able, are as effective at generating character capabilities in their children as parents on a high income.”