Children who are raised with 'tough love' by their parents are more likely to do well in life, a study showed

Children who grow up with parents who take a "tough love" approach to their upbringing are better prepared to do well in life, a report has suggested.

Experiencing a combination of warmth and discipline means youngsters are more likely to develop skills such as application, self-regulation and empathy than those with laissez-faire, authoritarian or disengaged parents, according to the study.

The report said those characteristics boosted children's life chances, social mobility and opportunity and were profoundly shaped in pre-school years.

According to the study, by think tank Demos, children with "tough love" parents were twice as likely to develop good character capabilities by the age of five than children with "disengaged" parents.

The Building Character report, which analysed data from more than 9,000 households in the UK from the Millennium Cohort Study, also looked at factors such as family structure and income.

It found children from the richest backgrounds were more than twice as likely to develop crucial characteristics than the poorest.

Children with married parents were twice as likely to show the traits than children from lone parent or step-parented families, the study found.

When parental style and confidence were factored in, the difference in child character development between richer and poorer families disappeared, indicating parenting was the most important influence, the authors said.

The same result occurred when the family structure factor was analysed. According to the report, other positive influences identified included the main carer's level of education, and breast-feeding.

Girls were more likely to develop character capabilities by the age of five, while no connection was found between paid employment of either parent and children's characteristics.