Dear Swati.

If I understood it well, you are wondering whether there are parenting styles different from those formulated by D. Baumrind (i.e., authoritative, authoritarian and permissive parenting).

I wonder whether you are acquainted with Martin Hoffman’s classical thinking about the discipline strategies parents use when dealing with misdeeds of several types committed by their children in their everyday life, namely at home. More precisely, Hoffman [see Hoffman, M. (1970). Moral development. In P. Mussen (Ed.), Carmichael's manual of child psychology (Vol. 2. pp. 261-360). New York: Wiley] studied children’s moral reasoning and development as a function of the type of discipline strategies parents employ while dealing with misbehavior committed by their children in their everyday life. Children’s moral development was seen in Piagetian terms [see Piaget, J. (1932). The moral development of the child)].As you certainly know Piaget distinguished moral heteronomy, a morality oriented to the ideas of fear, obedience and unilateral respect, from moral autonomy, a more advanced form of morality, a morality guided by the ideas of equality, cooperation, and bilateral respect.

Hoffman conceptualized three types of such discipline strategies: Power assertion, withdrawal of love and inductive or explanatory practices. There is power assertion when parents “… try to control the child’s behavior by appealing to their physical power or their control of certain resources…” such as toys, fruit-gums, and the like (Hoffman, 1970, p. 285). (e.g., “if you do that, to lie, for instance, you won’t have toys anymore”. Withdrawal of love is a kind of blackmail in that parents try to control the child’s behavior by threatening him/her with unpleasant psychological consequences, such as, “if you do that -- to hit your sister, for example -- mom does not like you anymore”. Thus, in the withdrawal of love strategy “… parents give a direct, albeit not physical, expression of their disapproval of the child’s transgressions.” (p. 285). Contrary to what happens with power assertion and withdrawal of love disciplines or practices, when inductive or explanatory practices are used, parents try to get the child’s adherence by explaining to him/her the negative effects of his/her misdeeds on others (e.g.,” if you hit your sister she will be hurt”).

Among other things, Hoffman found that such discipline strategies or practices were related to different levels of children’s moral development. For example, he found (see p.292) that the frequent use of power assertion on the part of the mother was consistently associated with a low level of children’s moral development, such as is the case of moral heteronomy. In contradistinction, inductive practices were positively associated with the child’s moral autonomy. In a nutshell, discipline strategies a la Hoffman are a good predictor of children’s moral development. As there is mounting evidence that shows that one’s cognitive and social development are a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition of one’s moral development, Hoffman’s parenting  strategies are also, to an extent, a predictor of children’s cognitive and social  development. Note that, the true, the good, and the beautiful are universal categories, regardless of how they are understood at different times and at different places.

As far as I know there is no standardized tool to assess Hoffman’s discipline strategies or parenting styles. This means that if you want to appeal to such strategies as predictors of developmental outcomes you have to conduct a semi-structured interview or a naturalistic observation while parents interact with their children at home. This is not bad, I think. Actually, psychologists often make use, for example, of standardized like-Likert scales. By so doing, they believe and get the impression – I would say the illusion -- that they are really measuring a certain psychological construct, such cognitive, moral, social, emotional, or aesthetical development. This is one of the reasons why I think that in psychology we should say to evaluate or assess, not to measure. Suffice it to say that, for example, in a Likert-scale the same score (40, for instance) can be obtained or achieved by answering differently to the several items of the scale at hand. The belief mentioned above is greatly responsible for what the Neo-Popperian Paul Meehl once called “the slow progress of soft psychology “[See Meehl, P. (1978) Theoretical risks and tabular asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the slow progress of softy psychology. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46, 806-834].

In short, to assess Hoffman’s discipline strategies, Baumrind’s parenting styles, and so forth, it is better to use a well conducted semi-structured or a naturalistic observation than to a supposedly or apparently rigorous standardized scale or test. Wittgenstein once remarked in his famous Philosophical Investigations that in psychology there are experimental methods [and many standardized scales and tests], but conceptual confusion. Psychologists and educators, let alone other social scientists, have not yet leaned from this Wittgenstein’s astute remark. Note that many questions on Research Gate are questions about scales and the like, an only a few are about the issue of conceptual, grammatical, or philosophical questions, as Wittgenstein used to say. Note also, that Piaget’s monumental theory of cognitive development never appealed to generally and theoretically ungrounded standardized scales or (mental) tests but rather to theoretically grounded interviews and developmental tasks. To see the difference between mental tests and developmental tasks a la Piaget, note that the former are referred to a quantitative norm, and the latter to a qualitative criterion. In other words, Piaget’s idea was to assess the type of one’s intelligence (i.e., to know better) than the quantity of one’s intelligence (i.e., to know more of the same).

I hope that I have got your question and that this helps.    

Best regards.               

Thank you for elaborative and explicit answer. yes I was not  aware of Hoffman's disciplinary methods. Yes qualitative criterion is always better option. But I ve seen educationist using the terminologies which I mentioned in my query. I just want to know whether these terminologies are research based.