Effect of Parenting Styles on Moral Development of Secondary School Students

Abstract

Parents are the basic source of moral development for their children. Parents transfer their norms and values to their children. Parents deal their children in different ways. These ways are called parenting styles. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of parenting styles on moral development of secondary school students. Parenting styles based on two behavioral traits, responsiveness and control. The parents who were high in responsiveness and high in control were authoritative and those who were low in both were neglectful. The parents who were high in responsiveness but low in control were permissive and low in responsiveness but high in control were authoritarian. The study was conducted in four district of Punjab province. Total sample of 1000 subjects was selected. Random sampling technique and mixed method research design was applied to conduct the study. Two instruments were applied. First instrument was Scale of Parenting Style (SPS) to estimate the parenting style perceived by the children using five point Likert scale. The second instrument was Moral Development Interview Inventory (MDII) to measure the moral development level of secondary school students. MDII war comprised of 10 dilemmas and respondents were given free hand to respond it. MDII was marked according to scoring method mentioned in the scale procedure. Data along with demographics information were entered in Microsoft Excel sheet and then imported in SPSS version 20. Descriptive statistics, Chi-square, t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were applied to find the results. The most common parenting style was found in parents of secondary school students and the less practiced parenting was permissive parenting style of students. SPSS version 20 was used to calculate the results. Descriptive analysis, t-test, Chi-square and ANOVA were applied to find the results. It was concluded that parenting styles have significant effect on moral development of secondary school students.