The Impacts of Over-protective and Supportive Parenting on Childrens Self-efficacy: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

Childrens self-efficacy is an important topic that has been widely discussed in hopes of constantly increasing in developmental period of children. During this challenging developmental period, parenting styles and interactions play a vital role in influencing childrens self-efficacy. The objective of this study is to examine how supportive parenting and over-protective parentings predict adolescents self-efficacy respectively, along with the effect of gender and grade level. A survey was given to students in age 12-18, combining six-graders, middle school students, and high students. The General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES) served as a basis to evaluate the questionnaires results. The first hypothesis was that over-protective parenting will negatively predict childrens self-efficacy, and supportive parenting is a positive predictor of self-efficacy. The second hypothesis was that demographic variables such as gender and grade might moderate the above correlation, indicating that females and younger schoolers are more vulnerable to the effect of over-protective parenting style which results in lower self-efficacy. The hypotheses were not fully supported by the statistic. Results confirmed that both over-protective and supportive parenting are significant predictors of childrens self-efficacy while gender and grade level showed a slight difference.