Examining young students’ preference for parenting styles and the effects of gender and emotions

Abstract

This study used a new research method in order to examine the preference of young participants for a particular parenting style and how self-reported emotions (positive or negative) could have influenced their preference. Also of interest were participants’ perceptions of their parents’ parenting styles. More specifically, the research aimed to determine (1) which is the most preferred parenting style of young participants and is there a gender effect when selecting a preferred parenting style?; (2) what parenting style ratings do participants give to their parents (biological fathers and mothers) and will they be different from their own ratings? – And finally (3) are the ratings for the three parenting styles somehow related and did the levels of their current emotions (positive and negative) relate to these ratings? The study recruited 100 students (18-25 years) from the University of Waikato. They all completed the first questionnaire “Parenting Style and Dimension Questionnaire,” which involved measures of parenting practice towards the children as well as a second questionnaire “The PERMA Profiler” which involved measures of overall positive and negative emotions among participants in the past few months. First, it was found that authoritative parenting style was the most preferred parenting style as compared to authoritarian and permissive parenting style. The permissive parenting style was the second preferred parenting style and the authoritarian style was the least preferred parenting style. Moreover, only a small gender effect was observed in those preferences. Further, our research demonstrated that participants’ ratings for their own parenting style were similar to the ratings they gave to their parents’ parenting style. Participants rated the authoritative parenting style for themselves slightly higher than for their parents, the authoritarian parenting style as slightly lower, and the permissive parenting style was rated similar as for their fathers, and slightly lower than their ratings for their mothers. Inferential statistics revealed that self-reported overall positive emotions as assessed by the PERMA profiler (positive emotions, relationships, meaning, and achievements) positively correlated with the ratings of participants’ authoritative parenting style. On the other hand, self-reported negative emotions and loneliness positively correlated with the ratings of the authoritarian and permissive parenting styles. These findings will hopefully help to promote more research into factors influencing parent’s preference for certain parenting styles, which are particularly helpful in creating flourishing upbringing in children.