Parents’ Parenting Styles And Academic Achievement Of .

Bulletin of Education and ResearchJune 2016, Vol. 38, No. 1 pp. 57-74Parents’ Parenting Styles and Academic Achievement ofUnderachievers and High Achievers at Middle School LevelAttiya Inam*, Sara Nomaan** and Muhammad Abiodullah***AbstractThe current research was conducted to find out the effect of parenting styles of both fathersand mothers on academic achievement of the underachiever and high achiever children. Asample of 210 participants including 70 students (35 low achievers and 35 high achievers) andtheir 70 parents (both fathers and mothers) was purposefully selected. The parents of theselected students were interviewed to find out their parenting style. The data were analyzedusing SPSS 21. Parenting styles were compared to students’ academic achievement throughANOVA. t-test was conducted to find difference between underachievers and high achievers.Findings showed that students whose parents were fully authoritative, fully permissive orthose who were using a mix of authoritative and permissive parenting style showedsignificantly better result than the students whose parents were permissive in their actionsonly.Keywords: Parenting, authoritative parenting, authoritarian parenting, permissive parenting,academic underachievement**Assistant Professor, College of Home Economics Gulberg Lahore. Email: attiya inam@yahoo.comLecturer, Home Economics College, Islamabad***Assistant Professor, Institute of Education and Research, University of the Punjab, Lahore**

Parents’ PS and Academic Achievement of Ua and Ha at Middle School Level58IntroductionAcademic underachievement is considered to be one of the major importantarea related to the children’s education and is continuously being studied for the lastfew decades (McCoach & Siegle, 2011). Emerick (1992) concluded that a brilliantchild not performing parallel to his mental ability is the most bewildering condition.Underachievement is an old phenomenon but has gained recognition recently.Younger, Warrington and McLellan (2005) reported, “the underachievement of girlsand boys is a complex and multi-dimensional problem.’Phillipson, 2008; Reis and McCoach (2000) and Rimm (2008) broadlydefined underachievement as a difference of child’s accomplishment at school and hisabilities. Battle (2002) described underachievement as disparity between students’achievement and his capability. Specifically the term is used for the studentsperforming significantly better in their aptitude test but in contrast performingsignificantly low in their academics.Malik and Badla (2006) showed existence of bright underachievers. Manyeducators, like Abbette (2007) agreed that underachievement was one of the mostserious problems faced by schools, affecting nearly one out of four children. Lupertand Pyryt (1996) concluded that the problem of underachievement was growing andwas most significantly growing in grades five through eight, making it a great concernfor educators of young adolescents. According to Rimm (2006) underachievementcould begin in elementary school as early as third or fourth grade. Battle (2002)affirmed that the number of underachievers increases dramatically in middle school.He further elaborated that it was during six to eigh grade that a pattern ofunderachievement consistently emerged in academic as well as non-academic fields.Rimm (2006) mentioned that a number of factors coalesce to make middleschools more vulnerable for underachievement such as child’s stress about hisintelligence and self-image, more challenging middle school curriculum, and thecompetitiveness with adolescents. He further elaborated that there was neither a genenor a neurological or biological explanation for underachievement so it was importantto understand that underachievers were not born; they learned to underachieve.Reasons behind the child's underachievement need exploration of main componentsof child's education; the home and the school. At home, the parents consciously orunconsciously prepare the child for school. According to Alarcon (1997) children areaffected by the parenting style of their parents all through their life. Parenting styleand parent-child relationship both have been found to be a causative factor in a

Attiya, Sara & Abiodullah59child’s academic success (Hayes, 2005; Payne, 2005; Smith-Hill, 2007). Curry(2007); Difnam (2007) and Sims (2008) have also confirmed parents’ contribution tobe a noteworthy factor in child’s academic accomplishment.Baumrind Classification (as cited in Alarcon, 1997; Yahaya & Nordin, 2006)served as the basis of identifying and classifying parenting style. According to him,most of the parents adopt one of these parenting styles i.e. Authoritative,Authoritarian and Permissive. The role that parents play in their children's lifeinfluences their development (Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington andBornstein, 2000). Parenting style used by parents has an impact on the cognitivedevelopment of their children (Alarcon, 1997). The Blackwell encyclopedia of socialwork (Davies, 2000) describes parenting as the task of doing all the things importantfor proper physical, emotional, social and intellectual growth of a child throughouthis life.According to Baumrind, parenting is characterized by different ratio ofbalance between responsiveness and demandingness by the parents in addition topsychological control exerted on the child. Darling (1999) further explained parentalresponsiveness as the extent to which parents intentionally foster individuality, selfregulation, and self-assertion by being attuned, supportive, and acquiescent tochildren’s special needs and demands" while the parental demandingness can beexplained as to how parents treat their children to become integrated into the wholefamily, this is shown by their demands of maturity, supervision of children, differentdisciplinary efforts and willingness to confront the child who disobey. According toBogenschneider, Small and Tsay (1997) proficient parenting is the one havingaffectionate relationship with children. Berk (as cited in Alarcon, 1997) has describedDiana Baumrind’s parenting styles as: Authoritative –demanding and responsive style of parentingAuthoritarian –demanding parenting style which is unresponsive torequirements of the childPermissive – parenting style opposite to authoritarian style i.e. the one whichis responsive to child but demands nothing from him.The authoritative parents control the activities of the children in a logical andreasonable way. These parent are demanding and accepting, they appreciate oraldiscussions, explain the children the logic behind their plans, and solicits theirobjections when they disagree (Grobman, 2003; Seid & Mikre, 2008). Theauthoritarian parents maintain the strict control on the behaviour and demand

Parents’ PS and Academic Achievement of Ua and Ha at Middle School Level60complete obedience from their children (Seid & Mikre, 2008).The permissive parentsare more confirming to the demands and actions of their children. They themselvesgive less responsibilities and tasks to their children (Grobman, 2003).Despite having different parenting styles, all parents want to raise theirchildren as happy and confident adults. Aunola, Stattin and Nurmi (2000) stated thatthe personalities of people make them vulnerable towards a specific parenting style.Authoritative parenting enables the children to perform better and actively taking partin their school activities thus increasing the chances of success at school (Steinberg,Lamborn, Dornbusch, & Darling, 1992).Children's expectancies of success are more closely related to their parents'expectancies than to their own past performance (Parsons, Adler, & Kaczala, 1982).Coil (2005) concluded that some parents are not concerned with the learning of theirchildren; they just want their children to have good grades in their exams. Theseparents place high importance to the result displayed on the report cards of children.Parsasirat, Montazeri, Yusooff, Subhi and Nen (2013) are of the view that one child inthis family might become high achiever while other become underachiever due to thepressure of parents.Mussen, Conger, Kagan and Huston (1998) accomplished that achievementin school doesn’t only depend on child’s abilities but also on many other situations.Parents’ expectancies and demands concerning achievement are more likely to raise achild’s achievement motivation when parents also make demands for maturebehavior. Yahaya and Nordin (2006) concluded that authoritative parenting stylecontributes to good level of motivation amongst the students. Rehman (2001) foundthat self-concept also had a positive relationship with the academic achievement ofstudents. It affects academic achievement and in turn is itself affected by theachievement of student. Self-concept is also affected by parenting as it develops bythe way parents interact, judge and deal with their children.In Ballantine’s findings (as cited in Seid & Mikre, 2008) authoritative parentshaving high goals and standards for their children possess greater chances to havechildren who are high achievers. Yahaya & Nordin (2006) confirmed that theauthoritative style of parenting enhances the children’s achievements. Taylor (as citedin Moon & Reis, 2004) also showed the same results. Weiner (1992) found thatparents of underachievers were either permissive or authoritarian. Cole and Cole (ascited in Alarcon, 1997) discovered that children with overly strict and demandingparents are usually underachievers.

Attiya, Sara & Abiodullah61Jeup (2007) found that psychosocial maturity serves to mediate therelationship between parenting style and academic achievement. Psychosocialmaturity is affected by the authoritative parenting, which further affects theperformance of the students in school. The factors which are used to measurepsychological maturity were found to have relationship with the higher grades andauthoritative parenting. Jeup (2007) discussed the relationship between parenting andacademic success, the highest indicator of children’s academic success from onegrade to another proved to be previous academic success. Milevsky, Schlechter,Netter, and Keehn (as cited in Elias & Yee, 2009) have found that most researchersstudying the relationship between parenting style and students’ outcomes consideredthe parenting style of only one of the parents.The findings of past studies like Marsiglio, Amato, Day, & Lamb (as cited inElias & Yee, 2009) suggested that the studies pointing towards the advantages ofauthoritative parenting on children are usually based on the parenting styles ofmothers only. Simons and Conger (2007) have also mentioned that researchers haveoften relied on parenting style of mothers and have generalized it to the fathers’parenting style. It is important to analyze the parenting style of both parents whilestudying its influences. Present study aims at finding the effect of parents’ parentingstyle on academic achievement of their children.Objectives To find out effect of parents’ parenting styles (Authoritative, Authoritarianand Permissive) on academic achievement of grade 6-8 students.To find out effect of fathers’ parenting styles (Authoritative, Authoritarianand Permissive) on academic achievement of under achieving students andhigh achievers.To find out effect of mothers’ parenting styles (Authoritative, Authoritarianand Permissive) on academic achievement of under achieving students andhigh achievers.Hypotheses There is statistically no significant effect of fathers' parenting styles onacademic achievement of underachieving students.There is statistically no significant effect of fathers' parenting styles onacademic achievement of high achievers.There is statistically no significant effect of Mothers' parenting styles onacademic achievement of underachieving students.