What Is Your Pet-Parenting Style?

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The way that parents care for their children is often seen in terms of parenting styles, with one parenting style (known as an authoritative style) having better outcomes for the child. In recent years, scientists have turned their attention to whether parenting styles can also be applied to the human-pet relationship. And it turns out, they can.

Parenting styles for children have two dimensions: demandingness (which relates to the parent’s expectations of the child) and responsiveness (which relates to the parent’s warmth and affection for the child, and how well they respond to the child’s needs). The best parenting style is a combination of high demandingness and high responsiveness, and it’s called an authoritative parenting style. It is not to be confused with an authoritarian style, which involves high demandingness but a low level of responsiveness to the child’s needs. (The other two styles are permissive and uninvolved, but since they don’t feature that much in the pet-parenting literature, I won’t get into them here).

A parent with an authoritative parenting style gives the child choices when they can, but only when it’s responsible to do so. They are willing to explain things and reason with the child, and they also show a lot of warmth and affection towards the child. In contrast, an authoritarian parenting style is very rules-based and expects children to do as they are told.

Do pet-parenting styles exist?

Of course, we can’t reason with our dogs and cats, but nonetheless it’s worth investigating whether parenting styles also apply to caring for a pet. Researchers have looked at whether pet parenting styles exist. They did so by adapting the questionnaire on parenting children to make it refer to caring for dogs.

A study of dog guardians identified three dog-parenting styles (van Herwinen et al 2018). An authoritarian approach is correction-focused and involves telling the dog off or using aversive training methods if the dog misbehaves.

An authoritative approach had two dimensions that capture different aspects of the relationship. They called it an authoritative-intrinsic-value approach if the person gave the dog choices and paid close attention to their dog’s needs: for example, allowing their dog to growl if upset and knowing what their dog’s preferences were for toys, food, etc. They called it an authoritative-training-oriented approach if the person used positive reinforcement to train their dog and took the time to get their dog to practice particular behaviors.

In later research, they found that pet-parenting style related to how the person behaved towards their dog on a walk that was set up to include some distractions (van Herwijnen et al 2020). Dog-parenting styles were also shown to correlate with attitudes towards animals (van Herwijnen et al, 2020b). Dogs whose guardian has an authoritative parenting style are more likely to have a secure attachment to their guardian (a measure of the quality of their relationship) and have higher scores on measures of sociability and problem-solving (Brubaker and Udell, 2023).

Although most of the research on pet-parenting styles has looked at dogs, a survey of cat guardians found that different human personality types (which in turn can be linked to pet-parenting style) are linked to cat behavior (Finka et al, 2019). In particular, high scores on the guardian’s neuroticism were linked to increased behavior issues in the cat. In contrast, when a cat guardian scores high on agreeableness, they were more likely to be satisfied with their cat and to report better scores for their cat’s well-being.

How does knowledge of pet-parenting styles help?

Many people with pets also have children. One way that talking about pet-parenting styles may be useful is simply that some pet guardians will already be aware of child-parenting styles: They will have a framework for understanding that some approaches to parenting are better than others, even if they can’t be expected to know the details. Having such a framework may make it easier for them to understand some aspects of pet behavior and training.

Knowledge of pet-parenting styles can also be useful because it’s another way of talking about training methods. We know that the use of aversive dog-training methods such as yelling at a dog, using prong or shock collars or leash “corrections” is associated with increased fear, anxiety, stress, aggression, and a worse human-animal relationship (e.g. Ziv, 2017).

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Similarly in cats, yelling at the cat or spraying water at them is also associated with negative outcomes. The use of a punishment-based approach comes under an authoritarian parenting style (this is also bad for kids). So knowing about pet parenting styles gives us another way of talking to people about how they train their pets.

A better relationship with your dog or cat

Everyone should be encouraged to aim for an authoritative pet-parenting style, one that uses positive reinforcement to teach behaviors and shows an awareness of the pet’s needs, including the provision of exercise, enrichment, and of course, choices when appropriate.

This is an approach I’ve spent many years advocating for. If you are currently using a correction-based approach with your pet, it’s a good idea to learn more about dog or cat behavior, because, when you understand your pet better, it becomes easier to care for them. And if you’re struggling with your pet’s behavior, reach out to a reward-based dog trainer or cat behaviorist for help.

This kind of approach isn’t better just for the pet; it’s also better for the human if the pet has fewer behavior issues and a better relationship with you.

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