Impact Of Parenting Styles On Adolescent Emotional Maturity

A large proportion of adolescents suffer different maladaptive problems such as depression, suicidal attempts aggressiveness and antisocial behavior, and drug abuse. There is a clear and well established relationship between parental behaviors and their children’s childhood and early adolescence behaviour patterns. Adolescence is characterized by innumerable and unique problems. Family, which plays an important role in the personality development of adolescents, is undergoing structural, emotional and interactional transformations. In the present circumstances, youth as well as children are facing difficulties in life. These difficulties are giving rise to many psychosomatic problems such as anxiety, tensions, frustrations and emotional upsets in day to day life. So, the study of emotional life is now emerging as a descriptive science. Emotional maturity is not only the effective determinant of personality pattern, but it also helps to control the growth of adolescents’ development. Hence an emperical study has been attempted to study on Impact of parenting styles on adolescent emotional maturity in Idukki District among students studying in plus one and plus two level students. The study reveals that 45percent of the respondents have medium level of emotional maturity. 32 percent of the respondents have low emotional maturity. 23 percent of the respondents have high emotional maturity. As per the correlation matrix Respondents’ emotional maturity level and the total parenting style is significantly correlated at 0.05 levels. To conclude, the emotional maturity of the adolescents is highly influenced by the parenting styles so every parent have to improve their better parenting style which will play a significant role in shaping the adolescent emotional maturity and there by they will bloom as a responsible citizen

IMPACT OF PARENTING STYLES ON ADOLESCENT EMOTIONAL MATURITY

INTRODUCTION

Parental attitudes, beliefs, and parenting styles have an impact on the development of their children. It is through the parent-child interaction that a child learns to survive in society. Parents have been implicated as the principal causal agents in their child’s behavioral, personality, emotional, and cognitive development

PARENTING PRACTICES

Attachment Parenting- strengthen the intuitive, psychological and emotional bond between the primary caregiver

Helicopter Parenting- over-parenting, parents are constantly involving themselves, interrupting the child’s ability to function on their own

Narcissistic Parenting- parents are driven by their own needs, their children are an extension of their own identity, use their children to live out their dreams

Positive Parenting- unconditional support, guiding them and supporting them for healthy development.

Slow Parenting- allowing the child to develop their own interests and allowing them to grow into their own person, lots of family time, allowing children to make their own decisions, limit electronics, simplistic toys

Spiritual Parenting- respecting the child’s individuality, making space for child to develop a sense of their own beliefs through their personality and their own potentials

Strict Parenting- Focused on strict discipline, demanding, with high expectations from the parents.

Toxic Parenting- poor parenting, complete disruption of the child’s ability to identify one’s self and reduced self-esteem, neglecting the needs of the child and abuse is sometimes seen in this parenting style

Unconditional Parenting- giving unconditional positive encouragement

PARENTING STYLES

A parenting style is a psychological construct representing standard strategies that parents use in their child rearing. There are many differing theories and opinions on the best ways to rear children, as well as differing levels of time and effort that Parents are willing to invest. Parenting style is affected by both the parents’ and children’s temperaments, and is largely based on the influence of one’s own parents and culture.

TYPES OF PARENTING STYLES

I. AUTHORITATIVE PARENTING

Authoritative parenting, also called balanced parenting, is characterized by a child-centered approach that holds high expectations of maturity. Authoritative parents can understand their children’s feelings and teach them how to regulate them. They often help them to find appropriate outlets to solve problems. “Authoritative parenting encourages children to be independent but still places limits and controls on their actions.” “Extensive verbal give-and-take is allowed, and parents are warm and nurturing toward the child.” This is will result in, children having a higher self esteem and independence because of the democratic give-take nature of the authoritative parenting style. This is the most recommended style of parenting by child-rearing experts.

II. AUTHORITARIAN PARENTING

In this style of parenting, children are expected to follow the strict rules established by the parents. Failure to follow such rules usually results in punishment. Authoritarian parents fail to explain the reasoning behind these rules. If asked to explain, the parent might simply reply, “Because I said so.” These parents have high demands, but are not responsive to their children. According to Baumrind, these parents “are obedience- and status-oriented, and expect their orders to be obeyed without explanation” (1991).

In 1983 Diana Baumrind found that children raised in an authoritarian-style home were less cheerful, more moody and more vulnerable to stress. In many cases these children also demonstrated passive hostility.

III. PERMISSIVE PARENTING

Permissive parents, sometimes referred to as indulgent parents, have very few demands to make of their children. These parents rarely discipline their children because they have relatively low expectations of maturity and self-control. According to Baumrind, permissive parents “are more responsive than they are demanding. They are nontraditional and lenient, do not require mature behavior, allow considerable self-regulation, and avoid confrontation” (1991). Children of permissive parents may tend to be more impulsive, and as adolescents, may engage more in misconduct, and in drug use. “Children never learn to control their own behavior and always expect to get their way.” But in the better cases they are emotionally secure, independent and are willing to learn and accept defeat. They mature quickly and are able to live life without the help of someone else.

UNINVOLVED PARENTING

An uninvolved parenting style is characterized by few demands, low responsiveness and little communication. While these parents fulfill the child’s basic needs, they are generally detached from their child’s life. In extreme cases, these parents may even reject or neglect the needs of their children. There is often a large gap between parents and children with this parenting style. Children with little or no communication with parents tended to be the victims of another child’s deviant behavior and may be involved in some deviance themselves. Children of uninvolved parents suffer in each of the following areas: social competence, academic performance, psychosocial development and problem behavior.

There is no single or definitive model of parenting. What may be right for one family or one child may not be suitable for another. The model or style that parents employ depends partly on how they themselves were reared, what they consider good parenting, the child’s temperament, their current environmental situation, and whether they place more importance on their own needs or whether they are striving to further their child’s future success.

IMPACT PARENTING STYLE ON THE BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN

Authoritarian parenting styles generally lead to children who are obedient and proficient, but they rank lower in happiness, social competence and self-esteem.

Authoritive parenting styles tend to result in children who are happy, capable and successful (Maccoby, 1992).

Permissive parenting often results in children who rank low in happiness and self-regulation. These children are more likely to experience problems with authority and tend to perform poorly in school.

Uninvolved parenting styles rank lowest across all life domains. These children tend to lack self-control, have low self-esteem and are less competent than their peers.

ADOLESCENCE

Adolescence can be a time of high risk for children, where new found freedoms can result in decisions that drastically open up or close off life opportunities. Parental issues at this stage of parenting include dealing with “rebellious” teenagers, who didn’t know freedom while they were smaller. In order to prevent all these, it is important to build a trusting relationship with them. This can be achieved by planning and spending fun activities together, keeping your promises, do not nag at him or her about their past mistakes and try to listen and talk to them, no matter how busy you are. When a trusting relationship is built, they are more likely to approach you for help when faced with negative peer pressure. Also, try to built a strong foundation to help your child to resist negative peer pressure, it is important to build up their self-esteem: Praise your child’s strength instead of focusing on their weakness acknowledge your child’s efforts, do not simply focus on the final result (when they notice that you recognize or they will turn to their peers for acceptance and comfort.

ATTACHMENT TO PARENTS

The beliefs and behaviour of individuals can partly be predicted from their experiences with their parents. In particular, if their parents were occasionally supportive and warm, but sometimes neglectful, critical, and unfair-and thus erratic and inconsistent-these individuals overreact to subtle cues. For example, these individuals will recognize each time one of their colleagues shows even mild disappointment. In response, they become very upset, because they, in essence, unconsciously relive all the criticisms and punishment they received from their parents

EMOTIONAL MATURITY

Emotional maturity is that the individual assesses a situation critically before responding to it emotionally instead of reacting to it unthinkingly as would a child or an immature person. This results in adolescents ignoring many stimuli that would have caused emotional outburst when adolescents are stable in their emotional responses an they don not swing from one emotion or mood to another, as they did earlier

To achieve emotional maturity, adolescent most learn to get a perspective on situations which otherwise would lead to emotional reactions. They can do this best by discussing their problems with others. Their willingness to disclose their attitudes, feelings and personal problems is influence partly by how secure they feel in their social relationships, partly by how much they like the “target person” (the person to whom they are willing to make the disclosure,) and by how much the target person is willing to disclose to them.

DIMENSIONS OF EMOTIONAL MATURITY.

1. Level of self confidence, self worth, and self esteem.

2. Degree of personal honesty and integrity.

3. Ability to express and feel love towards self, others and the environment.

4. An awareness of and respect for one’s inner emotional landscape.

5. Ability to experience intimacy with others.

6. The ability to feel balanced in the midst of emotionally challenging situations.

7. Ability to make independent decisions when necessary yet at the same time be able to work interdependently with others when required to do so.

8. Absence of self doubt, worry, anxiety, depression or other mood instabilities.

9. A healthy self image and self concept.

10. Ability to nurture others.

11. Ability to accept one’s current limitations and accept help as required.

12. Ability to be compassionate, understanding and forgiving as opposed to living from a place

of anger.

13. The ability to reflect calmly on one’s situation and take measured steps

According to Menninger (1999), emotional maturity includes the ability to deal constructively with reality. Emotional maturity is a process in which the personality is continuously striving for greater sense of emotional health, both intra-physically and interpersonally. Emotional maturity can be understood in terms of ability of self control which in turn is a result of thinking and learning.

In the present social scenario family as socialization agent undergo drastic changes. As a result the family structure, relationship patterns, attachment levels also is changing. Parenting styles and parental attitude towards children also changed a lot. Family, which plays an important role in the personality development of adolescents, is undergoing structural, emotional and interactional transformations. In the present circumstances, youth as well as children are facing difficulties in life. Adolescents’ value concepts and ideas about right and wrong is changing. Due to defects in parenting styles many a adolescent is getting affected day by day. Their inability to attain proper emotional maturity levels leads them to various problems like anti-social activities (delinquency, addiction to various substances etc…). Besides the number of adolescence suicide also is sky rocketing. Hence, it is high time to take preventive measures to protect adolescents from undesired peril. This study is aimed at analyzing the impact of parenting styles on adolescent emotional maturity, so that the researcher can contribute some valuable suggestions to enhance effective parenting style and thereby emotional maturity.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

TITLE OF THE STUDY

The title of the study is “The Impact of Parenting Styles on Adolescent Emotional Maturity”

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

To study the demographic profile of the respondents

To identify the respondents’ parents parenting style.

To find out the level of the emotional maturity of the respondents.

To study the inter- relationship between various parenting authority styles and emotional maturity of adolescent children.

RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS

There is no relationship between respondents’ emotional maturity level and the total parenting

RESEARCH DESIGN

The research design of the present study is descriptive in nature. It is a fact finding investigation with adequate interpretation. Different parenting styles are thoroughly analyzed and interpreted to find out the interrelationship between parental authority styles and adolescent emotional maturity. The researcher examines the various personal factors that affect/ influence parenting authority styles and adolescent emotional maturity levels.

UNIVERSE OF THE STUDY

All the adolescents studying in plus one and plus two classes in Idukki District.

SAMPLING PROCEDURE

The researcher selected 100 students randomly from schools under Idukki educational District.

The researcher used proportionate stratified random sampling method for the study.

SELECTION OF RESPONDENTS

The samples were selected proportionately from the four strata viz. Government, CBSE, ICSE, and Private schools. From each schools a sample of 25 respondents (who meet the inclusion criteria) were selected from both plus and plus two classes. Both female and male adolescents were given an equal chance to be a sample for the study.

TOOLS USED FOR DATA COLLECTION

1. The Parental Authority Questionnaire Developed by(PAQ; Buri, 1991).

2. The Emotional Maturity Questionnaire by Pierrette Desrosiers M.Ps(2009)

Rate each item on the questionnaire according the emotional maturity from life experience

MAJOR FINDINGS OF THE STUDY

More than half (52%0)t of the respondents belongs to the age group of 17 years.

The respondents are equally distributed ie,50 percent males and the rest 50 percent are females.

More than half (55%) of the respondents belongs to nuclear families.

Nearly(45%) of the respondents are from high income group i.e. 100001 and above per annum.

Nearly(41%) of the respondents’ mothers have plus two/ pre-degree level educational qualification

Just(33%) of the respondents’ fathers were graduates.

Just(40%) of the respondents ‘mothers have salaried jobs.

Nearly(38%) of the respondents’ fathers are engaged in business / agriculture.

More than half (51%) of the respondents experience moderate level of parenting authority style. 25 percent of the respondents experience low parenting authority style. And the rest 24 percent of respondents experience high parenting authority style.

10 Nearly(45%) of the respondents have medium level of emotional maturity. 32 percent of the respondents have low emotional maturity . 23 percent of the respondents have high emotional maturity

SOCIAL WORK INTERVENTION

Families are central to the lives of adolescents. Young people want guidance and support from caring adults and need a balance between autonomy and setting limits. Furthermore, even when young people have experienced physical abuse, several protective factors may buffer such youth ‘at risk’ from anti-social behavior. These protective factors include a positive peer group, positive school climate, religiosity, other adult support, family support, positive view of the future and involvement in extra-curricular activities etc.

ADOLESCENT FOCUSED INTERVENTIONS

INDIVIDUAL THERAPEUTIC APPROACHES

Individual therapeutic services that can be provided to the adolescents includes

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is said to be the most ‘efficacious’ intervention for anxiety in adolescents.

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) has also been found to be effective in reducing symptoms of depression in adolescents and is possibly more effective than CBT.

Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) is a model of psychotherapy that focuses on the unique needs of children 4 to 18 years of age who are experiencing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other problems related to traumatic life experiences, particularly sexual abuse.

PARENT FOCUSED INTERVENTIONS/PROGRAMS

Parenting programs aims:

To modify the risk factors of coercive family interaction and poor parenting which play a role in causing and/or maintaining externalizing behavior problems and delinquency

To enhance parent-child communication and connectedness and improve parental supervision and monitoring. Parental supervision, in particular, appears to be of crucial importance in preventing a range of adolescent risk behaviors.

FAMILY FOCUSED INTERVENTION

Family focused interactions include

Functional Family Therapy

Brief Strategic Family Therapy

Multidimensional Family Therapy and

Multi-systemic Therapy

The underlying principles of family therapy are

enhancing positive family relationships by improving communication and conflict resolution

tackling problems within the family which are maintaining the adolescent’s problem behavior

increasing the level of support provided from parent to child

shifting the focus of the problem from something within the adolescent to something within the family system

CONCLUSION

The findings of the present study reveal that the parenting styles have a direct impact upon adolescent emotional maturity. As per the findings of correlation matrix of key variables total parenting style has positive significant relationship with the emotional maturity level. Besides the dependent variables like place of residence, type of family occupation status of parents friendship status of the respondent etc have significant association with parenting styles. Therefore it can be concluded that emotional maturity level of the adolescents is influenced by the parenting styles. In the present social scenario adolescent emotional development has great significance. It is essential to make necessary measures to enhance healthy parenting styles and there by better levels of emotional maturity in adolescents.