Early bonding, Parenting Styles and Temperament: Association between three-generational Aspect of Parenting

Abstract

Background: Parenting styles differ with individuals. Early experiences play an important role to determinethe nature of parenting. However, studies do not highlight dyadic views of partners as a unit in their parentingstyles. Further, the critical age between 3-6 years is found to be vulnerable to environmental influences.Thus, the transactional influence in a three-generational viewpoint needs to be studied. The aim was tounderstand the three-generational aspect of parenting. The primary objective included understanding therelationship of early parental bonding on current parenting styles and its association with the temperamentof pre-school aged children.Method: 15 couples with children in preschool, aged between 3-6 years, of age range 20-40 years using aconvenience sampling were recruited. The participants were assessed by the Parental Bonding Instrument(PBI), Parental Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ) and Child Behaviour Questionnaire- Very ShortForm (CBQ-VSF). The data was further analyzed using descriptive statistics for the socio-demographics andthe association between the variables was assessed using Spearman’s rank correlation.Conclusion: Correlational analysis showed an authoritative parenting style positively correlated witheffortful control and a negative correlation with the surgency dimension of temperament. No significantrelationship between parental bonding and parenting styles was found.