Childhood adjustment: the effects of parenting styles on mood states

Abstract

Children’s adjustment refers to personal, social and family stressors that children have to adapt to. Ad­justment is related to personal and family aspects that have influence on children’s development. Emotional outcomes and parenting styles that par­ents use to ed­ucate their children are two of those aspects. This study examines parenting styles and emotional out­comes in predicting children’s ad­justment. The sam­ple consists of 1165 children between 8 and 12 years from primary schools of Valencia. Participants com­pleted the Scales Identi­fication of "Family Educa­tional Practices", The Mood Questionnaire and The Multifactorial Child­hood Self-Reported Adjustment Test. The respec­tive authorities and their parents ap­proved the study. Data were statistically analysed using t-test, bivariate correlations and hierarchical re­gressions. Results indicated that boys score higher on author­itative parenting, maladaptation at school as well as social and general maladaptation. Girls score higher on democratic parenting and fear. Parenting styles are related to emotional outcomes and to­gether they predict children’s adjustment (30 % of the vari­ance). Theses findings reveal that parenting styles have a strong effect on children’s adjust­ment, espe­cially regarding school and social life. Moreover, emotional outcomes are better predictor of children’s maladaptation than parenting styles.