The Relationship of Parenting Styles, Self-confidence and Students’ Academic Achievement

Abstract

Background and Purpose: The family is the first founder of personality and intellectual values that plays a crucial role in determining the individual’s destiny and future lifestyle. Meanwhile, developing positive relationship between parents and children, results in motivation to obtain academic achievements. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to determine the relationship of parenting styles, self-confidence and students’ academic achievement. Method: This is a descriptive-analytical research. The population study was all of the students of Birjand University of Medical Sciences. The sample was 364 students selected randomly based on Krejcie and Morgan table. The data were gathered via two questionnaires including the questionnaire of parenting style of Loft Abadi (2006) and Cooper Smith self-esteem inventory (1967). In addition, the total average of the students was used. The data were analyzed via independent t-test and Pearson correlation was significant at 0.05. Findings: Among the 364 participants, 200 students (54.9%) were female and 164 of them (45.1%) were male. The findings showed that most of the parents have coherence, intimate and responsive parenting styles. Furthermore, there was a positive relationship between coherence and intimate parenting styles, self-confidence and academic achievement. Moreover, there was a negative relationship between permissive, authoritarian, disorganized and rejecting-neglecting parenting styles, self-confidence and academic achievement (P<0.05). In addition, there was a significant difference between the level of self-confidence and academic achievement of male and female students (P<0.05). Conclusion: Consequently, since parenting styles play a crucial role in the enhancement of students’ self-confidence and academic achievement, teaching parenting styles to parents could result in students’ academic achievement.