PARENTING STYLES AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: EXAMINING MATERNAL AND PATERNAL INFLUENCES

Abstract

Scholastic performance in the university level is influenced not only by the cognitive and institutional factors but also by the family structure with respect to parenting style. This research based on the typology of Baumrind attempts to predict the academic achievement among the Pakistani elementary education students in view of maternal and paternal parenting styles; authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting styles. The survey design adopted was a quantitative, cross sectional survey, where the population was 250 undergraduates (aged 18–25 years) where Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ; Buri, 1991) was used to measure parenting styles and cumulative grade point average (CGPA) as achievement measure. Pearson and multiple regression were done to show that authoritative parenting, by both the mother and the father, was a significant predictor of high academic success, but maternal authoritarian parenting was a negative predictor of CGPA. The permissive parenting styles that were commonly reported did not show any significant associations with academic outcomes. Together, the parenting styles also described 46 percent of the academic achievement in students, and this level of influence is quite significant in determining a student’s success in education. These results not only demonstrate the cultural strength of authoritative parenting, which harms the authoritarian tendencies, but also attract attention to the role of permissive parenting unexplored in South Asian cultures. The research would add to the cross cultural research in that it demystifies the maternal and paternal factors on achievement in collectivistic society and provide implications of the research to educational policy, counseling, and parent training intervention to promote success in academic achievement among a university student body.