From the Heatlh Report ABC Radio National . This is both interesting and confirming. And it is the wellbeing stuff that keeps popping up in the same kinds of ideas over and over. This particular study also says that fathers seem to be particularly important in this whole deal. Hmmmm….
Norman Swan: Describe a flourishing person in their mid-50s and then back track to the average parenting that leads to that, or led to that as perceived by the person.
Felicia Huppert: A flourishing person is someone who feels competent in the world, someone who feels that they are developing in a positive way, certainly someone who has good relationships with other people, someone who accepts themselves and has some sort of sense of purpose in life.
And:
Felicia Huppert: In general certainly it was good if the parents were warm towards the child, warm and loving and very positive and gave praise as appropriate and so on. The next thing is that the parents did need to be engaged and really interested in what the child was doing and then the third one was that they had to be not too controlling, not over-protective, not intrusive but rather give the child some sense of trust, some respect, some freedom while at the same time being quite clear about boundaries, about what behaviours were acceptable and what were not.
I think it’s what people these days call authoritative parenting as opposed to authoritarian parenting.