Adolescents’ and Parents’ Perception of Parenting: Insights from a Tertiary Care Hospital-Based Study in South India
Abstract
Background: In the backdrop of continuing economic progress, and changing family structure in India, the current study was done to assess and compare the parents’ and adolescents’ perceptions of parenting, and evaluate the association between parents’ and adolescents’ perception on parenting with their demographic variables, in our setting.
Methods: Data was obtained from a systematic random sample of 150 parent and adolescent pairs attending a tertiary care hospital immunization clinic, by means of a validated, 5 subscale, 42 item, self-reporting measure-Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ-42) consisting of a parent form and a child form. APQ-42 subscale-wise and total scores were compared for adolescents and their parents; and the association of sociodemographic factors with total APQ-42 adolescent and parent scores was analysed using student’s t-test, independent sample t-test, Levene’s test, and One-way ANOVA using Bonferroni as its post hoc test.
Results: For both parents’ and adolescents’ perceptions, mean individual APQ scores were highest and lowest for the ‘involvement’ and ‘corporal punishment’ subscales respectively. Also, mean total APQ scores of parents (121.5±SD15.03) and adolescents (151.2±SD20.83) were significantly different (p<0.001) primarily due to significant difference in mean scores of 7 items included in the APQ-42 as ‘other discipline practices’, and not due to the 5 main subscales. Among the sociodemographic variables-parental age, educational status, and family structure (joint/nuclear) for parents; and gender and parents’ marital status (single/double parent) for adolescents were statistically significant influences (p<0.05) on total APQ-42 scores.
Conclusion: The study highlights the impact of specific demographic factors influencing parents’ and adolescents’ parenting perceptions in a rapidly transitioning socioeconomic landscape in urban southern India.
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