CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL   INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

Historical background

In ancient Greece and Rome, childhood ended by approximately the age of six. After that, children were viewed as adults (Cunningham, 2005). During the Renaissance period, children were often seen wearing adult-like clothing and were treated as mini-adults. Life was centered around the “Renaissance man” an individual who was cultured and an expert in many different subject areas, like the arts and sciences (Bigner and Gerhardt, 2014). Thus, parenting (and life) was adult-centered.

The historical context of parenting provides a starting point for how parenting styles and practices have shifted in the United States of America. During Colonial times, the Puritan beliefs shaped the way Americans viewed the needs of their children. The term Puritan means “against pleasure” and thus, “play” was considered sinful (Mintz, 2006).

During this time, they wanted to raise obedient children and thus, parents provided religious training to children by teaching them to memorize scriptures. This approach was also adult-centered. It was also a uni-directional approach, with parents having significant power over their children. Today, this parenting style would be called authoritarian.

In the Nineteenth century, there was a shift towards thinking about what children may need to grow and develop. During the industrial revolution, many fathers who were the primary disciplinarians in the household went away to work in manufacturing jobs. With this, there was a shift towards environmentalism.

Mother’s played a more central role in becoming role models for their children and providing them with a range of experiences to develop their children to the fullest potential. Early Develop mentalism also emerged; this was a movement that stemmed from Europe and advocated early education for children based on their unique, individual developmental needs.

With more knowledge about how children learn and develop, there was conflicting research on what works best for children. While some researchers advocated for more permissive styles (e.g., Freud, Spock, 1967) where the child must be understood and needs must be met, others (e.g., Watson, 1988) advocated for a behaviorist approach which advocated for a child’s impulses to be controlled in order to raise obedient children. Hence, the pendulum was swinging between adult-centered and child-centered approaches.

Today, parents try to meet the needs of their children through a bi-directional approach. They take the child’s age, interests, temperament and developmental needs into consideration when parenting.  Parents have to learn to be more flexible with this approach because a “one-size-fits-all” approach does not work.

There is more verbal give and take between adults and children. Parents are learning and practicing how to maintain structure and nurture. They listen and negotiate with their child—but they also tell their child when a compromise cannot be made. This is similar to the authoritative parenting style and research has found that this approach has the best academic, social, and emotional outcomes for children. (Amita Roy Shah, Ed.D.)

Conceptual background

Diana Baumrind, (1960) is widely considered to be the pioneer of introducing parental style and control – authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive, Cherry (2015) points out that the psychologist Diana Baumrind during the early 1960s, conducted a study on children studying in preschool using parental interviews, naturalistic observation and other research methods.

As a result, Baumrind identified four imperative dimensions of parenting including expectations of adulthood and control, communication styles, nurturance and warmth and disciplinary strategies. Based on the above mentioned dimensions, Cherry (2015) and Baumrind (1966) suggest that a majority of parents exhibit one of three mentioned parenting styles.

Darling (1999) argues that there are four parenting styles including indulgent, authoritative, authoritarian, and uninvolved.  This categorization is in accordance with their lowness or highness on parental responsiveness and demanding behavior. Darling also describes the viewpoints of Baumrind by stating that all of these four parenting styles reflect on different naturally occurring patterns of parental practices, behaviors and values.

Baumrind first introduced the concept of authoritative parenting style. According to Baumrind (1966), the authoritative parents provide guidance to their children on issue oriented and rational manner. Since the level of demandingness is higher in this parenting style, parents usually welcome effective communication as well as effective relationship between them (Piko & Balazs, 2012).

Hoskins (2014) points out that authoritative parents display more demandingness and responsiveness by exhibiting more supportive towards harsh behavior. These parents encourage verbal give-and take, express reasoning behind rules and use power, reason, and shaping to strengthen objectives. This style of parenting is more associated with positive adolescent outcomes. Nijhof and Engels (2007) have a firm belief that authoritative parenting style plays an influential role in the development of healthy adolescent psychologically and socially. This is particularly because authoritative parenting style helps the children to develop higher level of self-reliance, self-esteem and ability to employ effective coping strategies, while developing positive self-image (Parker & Benson, 2004)

According to Hoskins (2014), authoritarian parents exhibit low responsiveness and they are highly demanding. In this style of parenting, parents emphasize on conformity and obedience and thus expect that they are obeyed without explanation in a less warm environment. Furthermore, authoritarian parents display low level of engagement and trust toward their children.

According to Baumrind (1966), permissive parents attempt to behave in acceptant, affirmative and non-punitive manner toward their children’s impulses, actions and desires. Considering the definition proposed by Baumrind that this parenting style tends to have a higher level of responsiveness, it implies that a responsive parent is more likely to define and determine rules associated with family, while encouraging the adolescents to consider it as a resource (Johnson & Kelley, 2011).

The definition of parenting style is consistent with some of the earliest research on socialization, conducted during the 3rd and 4th decades of the 20th century. Interest in the influence of parents’ behavior on child development was a natural outgrowth of both behaviorist and Freudian theory. Child behaviorists were interested in how the patterning of reinforcement in the near environment shaped development.

Freudian theorists, in contrast, argued that the basic determinants of development were biological and inevitably in conflict with parental desires and societal requirements. The interaction between the child’s libidinal needs and the family environment was presumed to determine individual differences in children’s development. Then, as now, two questions dominated socialization research: What are the modal patterns of child rearing? What are the developmental consequences of different child rearing patterns?

Although there was general agreement that parenting practices influence child development, documenting the influence of specific practices proved elusive. Early socialization researchers recognized that individual parenting behaviors were the reason of many other behaviors and, therefore, the influence of an individual behavior could not be easily disaggregated. As one influential group noted,

Parenting style developed initially as a heuristic device to describe the parenting milieu. To the extent that this milieu was accurately captured by measures of parenting style, analyses using the construct were presumed to be more predictive of child attributes than analyses based on specific parenting practices, because the influence of any particular parenting practice on child development would easily be lost among the complexity of other parental attributes (Baldwin, 1948; Orlansky, 1949; Symonds, 1939). Initial qualitative and later quantitative efforts to assess parenting style focused on three particular components: the emotional relationship between the parent and child, the parents’ practices and behaviors, and the parents’ belief systems. Because researchers from different theoretical perspectives emphasized different processes through which parents influence their children, their writings stressed different components of style.

Theoretical background.

Theoretically three theories have provide a link between parenting style and academic performance, they include Diana Baumrinds theory of parenting styles (1966), Kohlberg theory of Moral development (1958) and Bronfenbrenner ecological system theory (1974). These three theories are selected because they gave a relationship between parenting style and moral development and  suggested that student learn and develop through their person-to-person interaction with parent, teachers, and peers and through the influence of their personal characteristics.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Statement of the problem

It has been realized that a person’s upbringing has a profound influence on how they see the world and how they process information (Bowman, 2008). Stevenson (1998) observed that different students view education as having different goals. This means that parenting can create a pool of informed citizens with a developed ability to think and reason and it can be used to establish students who share a common body of knowledge and who share socialization into the way things are done in a particular society.

Despite the efforts from the government and other child psychology organizations towards sensitizing parents on how to train or behave with their children at home, student moral behavior in schools and the society is nothing to write home about. Students still behave very wild and immoral with increase in crime wave, juvenile delinquency, rape, drug abuse, disrespect to elders and many other moral ills. it is assumed that the primary role of all parents is to influence, teach, and control their children. But this is not the case in the area of study.

Reports and observations on students from different parenting styles and family composition are indication to academic performance (Hussain, 2006). It is very unfortunate that most families in the Buea municipality are not intact. It is on this premise that this research is motivated to appraise parenting style and it effect on student academic performance in the Buea municipality.

Objectives of the Study

General objective

To investigate the effect of parenting style on students’ academic performance in the Buea Municipality.

Specific objective

1. To examine the effect of authoritarian parenting on students’ academic performance in the Buea Municipality.
2. To find out how authoritative parenting affects student’s academic performance in the Buea Municipality.
3. To investigate the influence of permissive parenting affects student academic performance in Buea Municipality.
4. To examine the effect of uninvolved or neglectful parenting on student academic performance in Buea Municipality.

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