Parenting Style: the Impact on School Performance

Running head: EFFECTS ON SCHOOL PERFORMANCE

Parenting Style: The Impact on School Performance

The idea that different parenting styles play a significant role on school achievement has been supported in literature for a long time. Diana Baumrind (1971) developed a categorization of parenting styles based upon a typological approach to the study of family socialization practices. This approach focuses on the configuration of different parenting practices and assumes that the impact of any one practice depends, in part, on the arrangement of all others. Variations in the configuration of major parenting elements (such as warmth, involvement, maturity demands, and supervision) produce variations in how a child responds to parental influence. From this perspective, parenting style is viewed as a characteristic of the parent that alters the effectiveness of family socialization practices and the child's receptiveness to such practices (Aunola, Stattin, and Nurmi, 2000). In addition, Baumrind's (1971) research identified four qualitatively different patterns of parental authority—authoritarian, authoritative, permissive and neglectful that are the results of the combination among high and low levels of demandingness and responsiveness (see Figure 1).
      Better academic achievement is confirmed when parents assume an authoritative parenting style with their children. Another experiment by Dornbusch, Ritter, Leiderman, Roberts, and Fraleigh (1987) reports strong evidence that the authoritative style of parenting is often associated with optimum academic, social, and psychological development. Evidence about the association between authoritative parenting and academic achievement, judged by grade point average (GPA), appears especially promising among members of different cultures (Dornbusch et al., 1987).
      Based upon the research reviewed up to date, we decided to conduct a study to gather a better understanding of how different parenting styles can affect...