Mr. and Mrs. Bennett have different parental qualities. What are their differences and who is presented as the better parent?

Neither Mr. Bennett nor Mrs. Bennett is presented as a particularly good parent. One might adapt Tolstoy to say that "Good parents are all alike; every bad parent is bad in his or her own way." The faults of mother and father are quite different, although they do have in common the characteristic of being overly self-centered.

Perhaps the quotation that expresses most their difference in parenting styles occurs when Mrs. Bennett presses her daughter...

Neither Mr. Bennett nor Mrs. Bennett is presented as a particularly good parent. One might adapt Tolstoy to say that "Good parents are all alike; every bad parent is bad in his or her own way." The faults of mother and father are quite different, although they do have in common the characteristic of being overly self-centered.

Perhaps the quotation that expresses most their difference in parenting styles occurs when Mrs. Bennett presses her daughter to visit the Bingleys despite her being ill; her husband comments:

. . . if your daughter should have a dangerous fit of illness, if she should die, it would be a comfort to know that it was all in pursuit of Mr. Bingley, and under your orders.

As this quotation shows, Mrs. Bennett is obsessed by finding husbands for her daughters. In one way, this is the mark of a good mother in this period, as the life of a woman without an independent income who was not married by her early twenties was quite unpleasant, there being few careers other than as a governess or servant available to women. Nonetheless, Mrs. Bennett tends to be unintelligent and does not exert any control over the two wilder young sisters, Kitty and Lydia and is socially inept due to her lack of intelligence and unsophisticated upbringing.

While Mr. Bennett has the intelligence and taste necessary to be a good father, he is generally lazy and leaves the task of parenting to a wife he has come to despise. As seen in the passage quoted above, even while he worries about Jane's health and Mrs. Bennett's judgment, he does not actually act to prevent Jane from traveling while ill. He is a good father to Elizabeth, with whom he has great intellectual sympathy and shares a sense of humor, but a bad parent especially to the younger girls. 

Although both are presented as bad parents, Mr. Bennett, due to his intelligence and wit, is somewhat more favorably portrayed.