Parenting Skills 
 It is very appropriate to consider ours and other's parenting styles (now or in the future) when deciding if someone is right for us. Parenting research has found that there are three dominant parenting styles reflected in the way parents interact with their children. The first is Authoritative Parenting which involves parents who have high levels of warmth and involvement with their children, coupled with appropriate firmness in boundary setting and behavior regulation. Hundreds of research studies have confirmed that authoritative parenting is the best parenting style for promoting optimal child development. The second style is Coercive Parenting, where parents have high levels of regulation, rules, and discipline, with little warmth and connection. The third style, Permissive Parenting, reverses the pattern and is characterized by parents who have high levels of warmth and involvement with children, but have little regulation or boundary setting behavior. The factors in this dimension give you a profile on the degree to which you use aspects of each parenting style.