Patterns of Nonverbal Parental Communication

What is it about?

The current study analyzed patterns of nonverbal parental communication. This study presents a social and situational contexts approach to explain various nonverbal parental communication styles. The analysis produced a conceptualization of patterns of nonverbal parental communication: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive. Multifaceted analyses revealed significant effects of a range of social and situational contexts. The findings delineated the contexts that activated diverse nonverbal parental communication styles. The proposed theoretical and analytical framework contributes to the research of parent–child interactions and establishes a social and situational approach for patterns of nonverbal parental communication.

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Why is it important?

Nonverbal communication plays an important role in parent–child interactions. It is important to study the nonverbal manifestations of authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting styles because the emotions and attitudes expressed by bodily communication play a major role in dyadic parent–child interaction. This study extends the well-established typology of parenting styles to parental nonverbal communication, which increases our ability to evaluate the quality of parent–child interaction.