Examining Parenting Style Effects on Personality Development and Academic Performance: A Study of School-Age Children

Abstract

This study examined the effects of different parenting styles on children’s personality and academic performance in Sargodha, Pakistan. Quantitative method was adopted and data was collected from two government secondary schools in Sargodha city with co-education. Research sample consisted of 150 children from different classes with equal representation of boys and girls selected 75 boys and 75 girls. A structured questionnaire was administered to the respondents obtained through multistage sampling method. The study used three different parenting styles namely authoritarian, authoritative and permissive. The results reported high levels of authoritative parenting and this parenting style was associated with children’s high social and psychological development. One way ANOVA showed significant differences from the three style of parenting with paternal effect sizes of 31% in psychological development and 30% in social development. The Tukey HSD post-hoc comparison indicated that children of authoritative parents were psychologically and socially more developed than children of authoritarian and permissive parents. Research shows that parents who are warm, have realistic expectations, and are communicative with their children are more likely to help their children become well-adjusted adults, especially during the children’s teenage years. This information is valuable to the advancement of the education of parenting and the initiatives of interventions which relate to the family in Pakistani culture.