Predictive Power of Parenting Styles on Children’s Social Skills

Daniel Bartholomeu,Afonso Antonio Machado,Geraldo A Fiamenghi,José Maria Montiel

doi:10.1177/2158244016638393

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between parenting styles and children’s social skills, establishing significant correlations between those two constructs. A total of 202 children, 7 to 10 years old, male and female, attending second to fourth year of government schools in São Paulo, Brazil, were participants of this research. They collectively completed Children’s Social Skills Test (THAS-C) and Parental Styles Inventory (IEP). Results suggest that positive parental styles are predictors of altruism, while negative parental styles are predictors of assertiveness, conversation, and social confidence. Regarding general social skills, variables that offered the best probable model were positive monitoring, lax discipline, moral behavior, and physical abuse (the higher the general social skill, the lesser the abusive parenting styles). As a conclusion, it seems that different social skills are related to positive and negative parenting styles, reinforcing the idea of a social skill as an attribute of behavior.

Highlights

Seminal studies in parental styles conducted by Baumrind and Black (1967) concluded that intellectually stimulating parental practices are associated with child’s competence, calling that an authoritative pattern of parenting
Darling and Steinberg (1993) proposed a model defining parenting style as “a constellation of attitudes toward the child that are communicated to the child and that, taken together, create an emotional climate in which the parent’s behaviors are expressed” (p. 488), including goal-specific and nongoal directed behaviors
Many studies in parental styles, over the years, have shown differences in authoritative and authoritarian attitudes, and apparently, authoritative styles were related to academic achievement, psychosocial maturity, and cooperation with peers (Baumrind & Black, 1967; Steinberg, Elmen, & Mounts, 1989)

Summary

Introduction

Seminal studies in parental styles conducted by Baumrind and Black (1967) concluded that intellectually stimulating parental practices are associated with child’s competence, calling that an authoritative pattern of parenting. The authors suggest that a balance between responsiveness and task orientation and an authoritarian style tends to produce better social competence in children Those results may not be applicable to different cultures. Results showed that fathers and mothers tend to contribute in different ways to children’s social development, indicating that, for fathers, parental proximity and positive monitoring were good predictors for the development of social competence in children, whereas social support was for mothers. Those aspects were verified by Trommsdorff, Cole, and Heikamp (2012) and Leidy, Guerra, and Toro (2010). This research was designed to investigate those aspects, hypothesizing that positive parental styles will promote socially adequate behaviors, opposite to negative parental styles

Participants

Procedures

Results and Discussion