Parenting styles and dimensions of emerging adulthood in yoga and nonyoga practitioners

Abstract

Background: Career choice in engineering, especially in India, is determined by many factors such as parental influence and other inherent traits of students. Understanding the factors that are associated with self-regulated, choiceful decision-making in a career choice is essential to build better human resources. Early yoga practice may influence certain inherent traits, which can enable autonomous decision-making. Hence, exploration of those psychological factors is attempted in this study. Aim: This study aims to explore the parenting styles and dimensions of emerging adulthood among yoga and nonyoga practitioners. Methods: From an engineering college in South India, 311 first-semester students were recruited for the study. The Free will and Determinism Scale, the General Health Questionnaire, the Inventory of the Dimensions of Emerging Adulthood, the 13-item short form of the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale, and the Perceived Parental Autonomy Support Scale were administered. Results: The students were divided into two categories, yoga practitioners and nonyoga practitioners. We performed Pearson's partial correlation between various variables across these two groups, controlling for social desirability scores. Overall, the magnitude of the correlations was low to moderate. Conclusion: There are a few dimensions of emerging adulthood that have desirable outcome trends, both in yoga and nonyoga practitioners. Distinct features of yoga practitioners are students who exercise inner free will, and with autonomy-supportive parenting style tend to have a positive outlook. Therefore, yoga may promote self-regulated ways of inner growth and learning in emerging adults.