The four main parenting styles — permissive, authoritative, neglectful and authoritarian — used in child psychology today are based on the work of Diana Baumrind, a developmental psychologist, and Stanford researchers Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin.

Each parenting style has different effects on children's behavior and can be identified by certain characteristics, as well as degrees of responsiveness (the extent to which parents are warm and sensitive to their children's needs) and demandingness (the extent of control parents put on their children in an attempt to influence their behavior).