Structure, discipline yield stronger relationships, parenting study finds

While enforcing rules makes parenting “feel harder” in the moment, parents and children both say their relationships improve under clear expectations in the long run, according to a recent study.

The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) interviewed 24,000 U.S. parents on the challenges of parenting and found both the number and age of kids, as well as the support of a spouse and community, significantly impact the results.

Unsurprisingly, parents who find parenting harder will have fewer children on average than parents who say the responsibility is easier, IFS reports.

Nearly 45% of parents say raising children is fairly or very hard, but the challenge correlates to the age of the kids, and varies between moms and dads, according to the research.

Moms say parenting children under 2 is easiest, while dads say that age is the hardest. For dads, kids 9–11 are the easiest to parent, and, for moms, kids 4–7 are the hardest, IFS reports.

While enforcing rules intensifies parental exhaustion, moms, dads and teenage children said rules lead to better relationships between parent and child.

Nearly every rule surveyed, apart from limiting a child’s social ties, correlates to a better parent-child relationship, according to IFS. Other rules included set bedtimes and curfews, limited screen time, intentional outside play time and focused homework time. 

American children today also have “the least unsupervised time than children of almost any prior generation,” according to IFS’s report. Modern kids are best characterized as “screen-heavy,” due to an increasingly common parenting tactic: plopping a child in front of a screen to minimize parenting challenges. 

“Raising children who climb trees, ride bikes, meet up with friends, and play instruments is hard work, even in places where parents who make these decisions are more common,” the researchers say.

But both kids and parents recognize the hard work yields better relationships.

“Where parents set standards, parent-child relationships are warmer, more fulfilling, and more mutually respectful,” IFS’s Lyman Stone concludes. “It may be one of the hardest parts of parenting, but it is worth it in the long run.”