Do parental shame-proneness, perfectionism and beliefs about children’s emotions predict inductive and power assertive parenting styles? An empirical study.

Abstract

Parental responses to transgressions are a mechanism through which self-conscious emotions and social competence are socialised in children. Evidence indicates that inductive parenting is more effective than power assertive parenting in the development of child social competence. Given variation in parental discipline responses, this study examined predictors of the use of these parenting styles. The present study investigated parental shame-proneness, parental perfectionism, and parental acceptance of children’s expression of emotions as predictors of a predominantly inductive or power assertive parenting style. Sixty-nine mothers of typically developing children aged between 5 to 11 years completed an online study. A scenario-based measure of parenting responses to child transgression allowed for the categorisation of mothers into those with a predominantly inductive parenting style and those with a predominantly power assertive parenting style. Measures of mothers’ shame-proneness, perfectionism, and beliefs about children’s emotional expression included the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA), the Almost Perfect Scale – Revised (APS-R), and the Parental Beliefs About Children’s Emotions (PBACE) questionnaire. Binary logistic regression analyses found a five-predictor model to be significantly better than a constant only model at predicting a predominantly inductive or power assertive parenting style. The five predictors in the model were parental shame-proneness, parental perfectionistic standards (adaptive perfectionism), parental acceptance of children’s expression of positive emotions, mothers’ level of education, and number of children in the family. The importance of considering these parental predictor variables, particularly shame-proneness, in the development of parenting interventions is discussed.